The Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union has denounced in a statement the “abuse of unpaid overtime in the Canary Islands” which, they explain, is “no longer an exception but a work routine.”
This practice, the union denounces, “steals time, wages, contributions and future from thousands of workers on the islands.”
“We demand real time control, exemplary sanctions, fair hiring and the payment of every minute worked because working is not a privilege, but a right with salary, contribution and dignity,” they demand.
According to data from the Active Population Survey (EPA), more than 8,200 salaried people work for free every week in the islands. Each week 129,984 overtime hours are worked in the archipelago, of which a quarter, 32,360, are “neither paid nor contributed to.”
This volume of free work “is equivalent to more than 800 full-time jobs that simply do not exist, because it is more profitable to squeeze the staff than to hire more people,” they explain from the union.
In economic terms, “this represents a scam of 34 million euros per year. Money that employers fail to pay in salaries, Social Security and taxes. A great business for companies. A disaster
for the working class and for the State,” they denounce.
“A worker who does overtime without pay stops receiving about 87 euros per week in salary and contributions. That is 4,526 euros per year that go directly into the company's pocket and disappear from the
public system. Because those hours are not only not paid: they don't even exist on paper,” explains CCOO.
“The public sector is the one that most violates this. Administration, health and education concentrate 6,889 unpaid overtime hours per week, carried out by more than 2,400 salaried people,” they specify.
CCOO recalls that in the Canary Islands the split shift is the norm and working weekends is no longer “exceptional.”
In addition, the working days are so long that “the Canary Islands average exceeds that of the rest of the State by more than 63 overtime hours.”
“Meanwhile, some employers' associations continue to obsessively talk about “absenteeism” as if it were the greatest evil in the labor market. But rarely —or never— do they dare to point out the true black hole of the
system: unpaid overtime,” they conclude.
