Regulation of employment. Procedures and workers affected. Counties and Aran, and areas

Regulation of employment

Number of cases presented by companies or legal representatives to request the suspension or termination of labour relations or reductions in the working day, for financial or other reasons, and that have been authorised by the labour authorities.

This includes collective layoff procedures that affect Catalonia, whether the procedure was managed by the Ministry for Business and Labour or the by Ministry for Employment and Social Security.

The source of the information is the statistical form that is filled in for each completed collective layoff procedure at the territorial services of the Ministry for Business and Labour or the Directorate General for Labour Relations and Quality in the Workplace of the Ministry for Business and Labour, or the Directorate General for Employment of the Ministry for Employment and Social Security.

Collective layoff procedures are classified by the following concepts:

• form of conclusion: authorisations and non-dismissed, non-authorised and dismissed applications (also includes closed and inadmissible applications);


• type: agreed and non-agreed (until 2009 authorised reports presented by workers and those of force majeure are classified as agreed; from 2010, on the understanding that for these procedures this information is not applicable, as is neither the case for reports affecting partners in cooperatives, they are classified as non-agreed);


• effect: only holds for authorised procedures and non-dismissed applications and may be suspension or termination of the labour relations or a reduction in work hours. Early retirements are statistically considered to be terminations.

Since Royal Decree 801/2011 came into force, approving the Regulations on collective layoff procedures and public authority functions concerning collective relocations, suspension is understood to mean cessation of the activity affecting full days, whether these are continuous or alternate, while a reduction in work hours is defined as the temporary reduction of the workday by between 10% and 70%, calculated on the base of a daily, weekly, monthly or annual workday. Therefore the statistics on collective layoff procedures for the period between the entry in force of the Royal Decree on Law 10/2010 and the entry in force of Royal Decree 801/2011, in terms of suspension and reduction measures, must be interpreted with caution given these changes in association to the management of procedures and this should be taken into consideration when analysing the data time series.

Non-dismissed applications are procedures that were initiated from February 12, 2012 (entry in force of Royal Decree on Law 3/2012, of February 10, on urgent measures for the reform of the labour market). These are temporarily accounted for in accordance with the date of notification of the business decision at the end of the consultation period. Since February 12, 2012, authorised procedures only include those of force majeure and those affecting partners in cooperative companies.