Reduction of working hours in Spain

The Spanish Federation of Fruit and Vegetable Exporters (FEPEX) rejects the bill to reduce working hours, which has been made without taking into account collective bargaining and without taking into account the specificities of the fruit and vegetable sector, one of those that generate more employment in agriculture and in which labor accounts for up to 45% of production costs, so it will cause loss of competitiveness in farms and affect employment.

Minimum wage hike of 54% from 2018.

The successive increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), which since 2018 have meant an increase of more than 54%, has determined an increase in wage costs, which together with the increase in other production costs has made companies face a very difficult situation to maintain their economic sustainability as it is not possible, in most cases to transfer the costs to the prices accepted by the distribution and in the face of strong competition from competing non-EU countries with much lower labor costs.

Small farms and seasonality

According to FEPEX, this sector is also characterized by a marked duality in relation to the employers that make it up, formed by a majority of very small farms and by another group formed by medium and large farms, which absorb most of the employment and are characterized by their orientation to the foreign market.

It is an employment defined by seasonality, cyclical and intermittent work in production, and the seasonality and urgency of many of the tasks and, as a consequence, the immediate need for employment of temporary labor. This makes necessary a series of measures that from FEPEX have been proposed and transferred to the administration, especially a regulation of the irregular distribution of the day adapted to the characteristics of employment in the sector and increasing the limit of overtime, as they have legislated the main European competitor countries.

Employment has fallen by 7.3% in small agricultural enterprises.

At the same time producers and exporters grouped in FEPEX have shown great discomfort by references to various sectors, including Agriculture, appearing in the memory of the impact of the draft law of the Ministry of Labour, known this week, ensuring that it has sufficient capacity to cope with a production of the working day. However, the reality is different. As an example, according to data from Labor, employment has grown by 14% in the total economy between 2019 and 2024. However, in companies with between 1 and 9 workers in the agriculture, livestock and fishing sector it fell by 7.3%. Source: FEPEX

For more information on the new Spanish labor legislation, you can write here.