The skyscrapers of Madrid, where the multinationals Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG have their headquarters, were put under the magnifying glass.
The Big Four – the name by which the four major consultancies Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG are known – received a simultaneous visit in November from officials from the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate at their headquarters, located in the Madrid skyscrapers.
The action is part of the fight of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy, directed by Yolanda Diaz, against the marathon days that exceed the 40 weekly hours regulated by Spanish law.
The regulations allow overtime, but never above 80 a year, except for those compensated by rest, and always paid. Something that in general is not usually respected in the consulting sector, as is well known, with endless shifts that tend to reach 80 hours a week in some cases.
According to various media, such as El Confidencial or El Plural, this simultaneous inspection surprised the companies and they experienced routs of workers, emptying of plants whole before inspectors and other expressions of corporate panic got to them. reported by the workers.
The truth is that unannounced inspections are common, although simultaneous performance is not so common, as was the case in this case. According to reports, some of the investigations extended to high hours of the morning.
No further details have been made public from Diaz’s department because the investigation is still open, although it has emerged that the Inspectorate was collecting data on the operation of these companies for months, before visiting the corporate headquarters.
Companies fight back
The companies defended themselves by arguing that they generate a large volume of employment. In Spain alone, between the four of them they have around 23,000 workers. In addition, they point out that they offer places to a large number of recent graduates, around 10,000.
They also maintain that they are leaders in the implementation of conciliation measures, which they believe are not incompatible with the flexibility in the organization of the work day.
However, the concerns of the Labor Inspectorate have a solid basis, after during the negotiation between the unions and the Association of Consulting Companies (AEC), the employers made it clear that their intention was to work on Saturdays without compensation and extend the legal maximum daily working day to 12 hoursas denounced by the unions.
Precisely, the working conditions that include excessive hours were found behind a series of strikes called by the majority unions, CC.OO. and UGT last year. “If what they need is to cover more hours of daily work to meet objectives with clients, why don’t they hire people? We are talking about companies that obtain huge amounts of profit, that they explain it to us because we do not understand it”, said CC.OO. in May of last year.
These four consulting giants achieved in 2021 a profit of more than 2,500 million euros: Deloitte reached 890, PwC 670, EY 595 and KPMG 500.
The control of the times between the objectives of the Ministry of Labor
The control of the effective hours of work time is one of the priority objectives of the action of the Labor Inspectorate, even more so since the entry into force of the registration of working hours in the country, in 2019.
Since then different campaigns have been developed. In 2022, 32,644 actions of this type were carried out, which detected more than 11,000 violations that affected more than 112,000 workers and involved 13.7 million euros in fines. This is a number of non-compliances that doubles that of 2019, the year before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
Diaz: “No company will remain outside the law”
The Ministry of Labor has located this macro-raid in the most absolute normalityalthough it occurred only a few days after the increase in the number of labor inspectors by some 600 people was announced, which would be added to the 3,000 that now exist.
The increase in the workforce is one of the demands of the inspectors, which has led to the call for three days of strike.
For her part, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Diaz, warned on Monday, after the simultaneous visit to the four towers became known, that no company “no matter how large” is going to “be left out of the legality”.
“I think that we are very clear from the Second Vice Presidency and the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy. There is not going to be any company, from the smallest to the largest, no matter how big it is, or even a multinational consultancy, that will be left behind. outside the law”, were Diaz’s words when asked by the media.
Towards a seven-hour day?
The information about these simultaneous inspections has been known only a few days after Diaz opened another controversy related to working hours.
The minister expressed her chest that Spain was a pioneer in implementing the eight-hour working day, a century ago.
“We were pioneers in Europe in establishing an eight-hour working day. But that was a century ago, in 1919. The time has come to ask ourselves something fundamental, which is reduce that working day“He said in an act on his Sumar platform last Thursday.
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Source: RT
