Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2011, published 101st ILC session (2012)

Unemployment Provision Convention, 1934 (No. 44) - Spain (Ratification: 1971)

Article 1 of the Convention. Maintenance of a scheme of protection against unemployment. The Committee notes that, between 2007 and 2011, the number of persons in receipt of contributory and non-contributory unemployment benefits rose from 2 million to about 4.5 million, and the coverage of the unemployment benefit scheme rose from 71.4 to 78.4 per cent of persons seeking employment. With a view to softening the effects of the economic crisis affecting the country, the unemployment protection scheme has been subject to a significant number of modifications which bear witness to the diversity of the approaches tried by the Government with a view to improving the labour market in Spain. This diversity is illustrated by Act No. 35/2010 of 17 September 2010 adopting urgent measures to reform the labour market, the objectives of which include ensuring closer links between employment policy and unemployment benefits; redefining, for the purposes of unemployment benefit, the concepts of total and partial unemployment; including workers under training contracts for the purposes of contributions and the receipt of unemployment benefit; and increasing from 120 to 180 days the maximum period for which entitlement to unemployment benefit is re-established in the event of the suspension of the employment relationship as a result of a social plan. The other measures indicated by the Government include the following elements: the extension of unemployment protection to hitherto excluded categories of workers (members of cooperatives, self-employed workers, persons engaged in certain public and trade union positions); increased flexibility in the conditions of eligibility for unemployment benefit (both contributory benefits and social assistance allowances); the creation of new extraordinary unemployment cash benefits provided, subject to a means test, to persons who have exhausted their entitlement to other contributory or non contributory benefits; the creation of new benefits in relation with active labour market policies (active integration annuities paid to unemployment persons in need who are experiencing serious difficulties in finding employment), and with vocational recycling programmes; extension of the period for which benefits are provided; increase in the level of certain unemployment benefits; and an increase in the level and flexibility of the conditions for the granting of a lump sum to young unemployed persons instead of unemployment benefit when they opt to register as self-employed workers.

The Committee notes that the measures adopted by the Government are based on the need for the implementation of integrated and coherent policies, intended to promote simultaneously the two objectives of full employment and the extension of social security coverage. In view of the experience acquired by the Government in the management of the unemployment protection scheme in the context of the economic and social crisis and increased flexibility of the labour market, the Committee would be grateful if it would include in future reports general indications, under Part V of the report form on the Convention, in relation to the positive effects and practical difficulties encountered in ensuring effective coordination between employment policy and unemployment benefits, with an indication of the measures deemed effective in extending the coverage of unemployment benefit to flexible forms of employment. In so doing, the Government is invited to refer to the observations made by the Committee on these issues in its General Survey of 2011 on the social security instruments, Part IV, Chapter 2, “The need for effective coordination between social security and employment policy” (see in particular paragraphs 517–519).