Spain’s unemployment offices are struggling to deal with the flood of jobless claims tied to the temporary layoff scheme meant to soften the economic blow of the coronavirus crisis.
Around three million workers have requested unemployment assistance after companies filed 450,000 ERTEs (or expediente de regulación temporal de empleo, as the temporary layoff plan is called in Spanish). Under the scheme, employers can send workers home without pay for a certain amount of time, but must take them back once this period ends. Workers can claim unemployment during this time, and companies can also put staff on a reduced schedule.
Faced with a surge in ERTE claims, regional governments have expanded their processing staff in a bid to avoid blockages in the system, but government sources said that the real challenge lies in the millions of individual jobless claims, which are handled by the national agency SEPE, which has beefed up its computer, system in order to quadruple its ability to process and approve claims. Over 600,000 jobless claims were approved in March, and more than 2.5 million are expected to be green-lighted by late April so that most of the applicants can start collecting their benefits in early May.
The Spanish government decreed a state of alarm exactly one month ago. During this time, the number of workers affected by ERTE filings has soared to more than double of what they were during the entire 2009-2019 period, which included a long economic crisis in Spain.
Public unemployment services, which had already experienced cuts after years of austerity, are now faced with an unprecedented workload. The regional chief of employment for the Valencia region said that where there were once 10 workers processing ERTEs, there are now 40.
Slow process
Legal experts who are helping corporate clients file ERTEs complain that the process is too slow. Teresa Aguirre, a labour lawyer, has filed ERTEs in Madrid, the Valencia region and the Basque Country for schools, restaurants and a museum, and she says that so far only one decision has been returned. In Madrid, she cannot even follow up on the status of the applications, which are being filed online. She also reports that numerous technical glitches are affecting web-pages and apps.
Maricarmen Barrera, head of social policy at the labour union UGT, talks about “a bottleneck,” and says that the years of cuts and lack of investment in public employment services are now becoming evident.
The concentrated effort to cover ERTE-related jobless claims is also delaying other initiatives, such as processing the financial aid for domestic workers introduced by the government as part of its coronavirus relief effort.
“The benefit scheme for domestic workers is currently being designed. It involves a lot of work and when it’s ready we will make the announcement,” said sources at the Spanish Labour Ministry. Approved on 31st March, the aid is expected to reach an estimated 400,000 house workers who are signed up to the Social Security system.