MADRID, 28 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Workers affected by employment regulation files (ERE) authorized by the labor authorities or communicated to them increased by 65% ​​in the first two months of the year compared to the same period in 2023, up to a total of 18,587 affected, according to provisional data from the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy collected by Europa Press.

By type of procedure, the volume of workers affected by collective dismissals rose 29% year-on-year in the first two months of the year, up to a total of 2,999 workers affected.

For their part, workers affected by contract suspensions increased by 87.3%, to 14,933 employees, while those affected by work-day reduction procedures decreased by 32.3%, to a total of 655 affected.

Of the total number of workers who were on ERE at the end of February, 5.4% (1,015 workers) were affected by procedures caused by force majeure, while 94.5% (17,572 employees) were affected by emergency procedures. regulation derived from economic, technical, organizational and production causes (ETOP).

The former increased by 7.5% compared to January-February 2023, while those caused by ETOP causes increased by 70.3% compared to the same period last year.

The Ministry recalls that when a procedure affects several work centers located in different provinces, one procedure for each province is computed in the statistics. Furthermore, if a company notifies affected workers in different months, one procedure is computed for each month.

By sectors, the total number of workers affected by all procedures increased by 80.2% in industry and 63.5% in construction, to 12,620 and 242 affected, respectively, while they grew by 41.8% in agriculture, up to 275 affected, and they advanced by 39.1% in services, up to 5,450 affected.

By type of procedure, workers affected by collective dismissals decreased by 49.2% in the construction sector, up to 61 workers affected, while those affected in industry and construction grew by 29.7% and 27 .7% compared to the first two months of 2023, totaling 1,004 and 1,828 affected, respectively. In agriculture, those affected by collective layoffs totaled 106.

For its part, workers affected by suspension of contracts increased sixfold in construction, up to a total of 170 affected, although the industrial sector was the sector with the highest number of employees with suspension of their contracts, 11,200, 88.6% more than in the first two months of 2023. In services and agriculture, employees affected by these procedures increased by 83% and 7%, respectively.

By autonomous community, the Valencian Community was the one that had the most workers affected by ERE in absolute numbers in the first two months, with 6,838 workers, the majority of them suspended from employment and linked to the Ford factory in Almussafes. Madrid is next, with 2,751 affected, and Navarra, with 1,933.

However, in relative terms, the autonomous community that most increased the number of workers affected by ERE until February was Cantabria, which multiplied it by 11, to 918 affected. At the opposite extreme, the greatest decrease was recorded in Murcia, with a drop in its workers affected by ERE of 90%.