The Labor Inspection starts a campaign against those who do not pay the minimum wage to domestic workers
The Labor Inspectorate has launched a campaign to combat wages below the legal minimum for domestic workers. The Action Plan aims to regularize the salaries and Social Security contributions of domestic workers, a particularly precarious group, to guarantee that their salaries reach at least the SMI (minimum interprofessional salary). The Inspectorate has already sent "45,000" letters to employers who are allegedly not complying with this minimum, the Ministry of Labor explains to elDiario.es.
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Work from home is an especially complex environment, and in many cases inaccessible, for the Labor Inspectorate. Due to the inviolability of the home recognized by the Constitution, inspectors do not have the same access to homes as they do to companies to check the working conditions of domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women (88%).
This opacity is one more element that contributes to the precariousness of these workers, of which it is estimated that around a third are in an irregular situation, without being registered with Social Security. In the latter group, women migrant workers stand out above all, especially those who do not have a work or residence permit.
The latest EPA data indicates that there were 563,100 people employed in domestic work in the last quarter of the year. The figure is much higher than the 381,896 female employees registered with Social Security, according to the latest data for December.
45,000 letters sent
The inspection and "awareness" campaign is aimed at employers, who are urged to comply with labor legislation. Households are required to "proceed to the regularization of wages that are below the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI) and the correlative regularization of Social Security contributions." For this, the Inspection offers technical assistance and information to employers, indicated in Labor.
The minimum interprofessional salary for a full day is located at 950 euros / month in 14 payments (€ 1,108.33 / month with proration of extra payments). For an hourly shift, the SMI is 7.43 euros / hour.
The Inspection has published a section on your website about the campaign, with information for employers in which they explain "the different ways to regularize wages and contributions: both at the Electronic Headquarters of Social Security, through the RED System (social graduates, agencies and authorized professionals) or by sending a form that can be accessed in a QR available on the website ".
For now, the Labor Inspectorate has already approached those 45,000 employers to inform them of the alleged irregularity detected. It has not contacted them with sanction proposals, but they communicate with households to require them to comply with the regulations. The idea of the Ministry of Labor is to expand the number of letters sent. "The 45,000 are the first shipment," they indicate in Work.
Be careful with the employees without registering
"The Action Plan of the Autonomous Organization also focuses on the fight against the irregular economy," explains the Ministry of Labor. For this, "priority will be given to the complaints filed and communications received in the Mailbox of the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate" that warn of this abuse, for which the workers are not contributing to Social Security.
The irregularity of domestic employees has repercussions on their present and future social protection, since they are not contributing to Social Security. In the pandemic, a very clear example of this lack of protection was seen, since women workers in an irregular situation - as we have seen, about 200,000 - were excluded from the extraordinary unemployment benefit that the Government launched due to the emergency.
The groups of domestic and care workers demand that the Government recognize the right to unemployment for these workers, the only ones without the right to unemployment. Although the Government of Pedro Sánchez, both the mono-color of the PSOE and the coalition, has promised to ratify ILO Convention 189 to recognize the unemployment of this group, it has not yet complied with it.
