Madrid (EFE).- Of the 63,875 contracts to obtain professional practice signed in 2022, 41.63% (26,592) became permanent, according to data from the Public State Employment Service (SEPE) for the first year in force of the labor reform that changed the training contracts.
After the reform, the training contract has come to have two modalities: obtaining professional practice for graduates and alternating training for those who are still training.
Faced with the high conversion of contracts to obtain professional practice into permanent contracts, only 5.3% of the alternating training contracts (2,150 of 40,298) became permanent.
The unions attribute it to the very nature of the contract, because it is a part-time job while the training continues, and because it lasts up to two years compared to the maximum one-year contract to obtain the internship. professional.
The contract for graduates -different from academic internships- is remunerated in accordance with the provisions of the applicable collective agreement, while the remuneration of the contract for those still training cannot be less than 60% of that set for the corresponding professional group. the first year, nor less than 75% the second.
For their part, CEOE sources tell EFE that the contract to obtain the professional practice is pending regulatory development, such as the completion of the training itineraries, in view of which many companies prefer to convert this type of contract into an indefinite one instead of extending it. .
The same sources point out that, for companies, the cost of a worker with an indefinite contract and that of one with a training contract is the same, so that, if they stay with a worker, already qualified and trained in the company, they choose for transforming it into fixed.
Unions value training contracts
“We believe that both the training contract and the contract for obtaining professional practice are two good instruments for inserting young people into the labor market,” the deputy general secretary for Union Policy of the UGT, Fernando Luján, told EFE.
For his part, the deputy to the CCOO Union Action Secretariat, Raúl Olmos, highlighted in a conversation with EFE that these two contracts, which did not come into force until March, have aspects to regulate “pending regulatory development.”
“Spain is, by far, the country with the fewest training contracts in the EU,” Olmos points out, something that he attributes to the fact that, “until now, it was one more precarious contract”, a situation that would have changed as a result of the labor reform , although there are still aspects to be deployed to generalize them.
In this sense, Luján believes that the Ministry of Labor should provide companies with information about “these two magnificent instruments for the labor insertion of young people.”
All in all, CCOO celebrates that the new contracts protect workers to a greater extent, since before the labor reform a “training contract in fraud of the law” only became indefinite if there was irregularity in the labor field, now it also happens when the irregularity is detected in the formative plane.
Waiting for the status of the intern
“We will have the complete photo when the scholarship statute is approved,” says Olmos, something with which the UGT vice-secretary agrees, since, he insists, “as long as companies have the possibility of, through false scholarship holders, replace job training, they are probably not used (training contracts) as abundantly’.
Unions and the Government have already closed an agreement on the text that will regulate non-labor practices, although the Executive wants the CEOE to join the statute, which has so far prevented its approval.
“Our position is that we can contemplate everything that improves the agreement,” says Luján, who is open to some adjustment to include the employers as long as it does not alter the core of the already agreed text.
From UGT they consider that, once non-labor practices are regulated, the alternating training contract will give the “starting gun”, increasing both its use and its conversion into permanent contracts.
