Hospitality employers have begun to work on creating a pension fund like the one just launched by construction with the aim that 1.9 million workers, many of them waiters, can have a supplement when they retire. The project is in the embryonic phase, but if it goes ahead it would become the plan with the greatest sectoral scope in Spain and could represent a shake-up in the employment landscape.
The initiative is the result of the reform undertaken last year by the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security to provide fiscal incentives for this type of simplified employment pension plans to the detriment of individual ones. The idea is to comply with one of the recommendations of the Toledo Pact and the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (Airef) and ensure that workers in labor-intensive sectors, generally with lower salaries, can benefit from this savings formula to The retirement. And it is also complemented with specific plans for self-employed workers.
The general secretary of Hospitality of Spain, Emilio Gallego, explains that the association has already maintained contacts with the Minister of Social Security, José Luis Escrivá, and with the construction sector to analyze this particular waiter's pension fund. “Pension uncertainty is high and Spain is committed to diversifying its generation sources,” says Gallego, whose business confederation represents 300,000 companies nationwide.
For the moment, what there is are some “first contacts” and “interest” in the initiative that serves as a “mirror”, the one that has just been launched by the construction sector, whose new pension fund, managed by VidaCaixa, It started a few days ago. “We are very followers of the construction sector,” says Gallego. Negotiations have not yet been opened with the unions or the approach that serves as a basis has been formulated, but the impression is that "it is a point of agreement rather than divergence."
The reference is the pension plan launched by the National Construction Confederation (CNC) for 1.4 million workers, which was launched on Saturday, September 23 with its publication in the BOE. The first contributions will begin to be received from October and the objective is to accumulate a savings pool of between 3,000 and 3,500 million euros in ten years.
The builders' plan has in its favor that it has been included in the sector's collective agreement and that the contributions made by the companies are mandatory. They will be made as part of the agreed salary increases.
The hospitality industry does not have a general collective agreement, but rather more than a dozen of them of a provincial or regional nature. However, there is a State Labor Agreement for the Hospitality sector, the ALEH, which can accommodate a measure of this type, as well as a foundation to articulate it, although its operation is not free of complexities. These factors add a difficulty to the hospitality industry that does not exist in construction.
Omar Rodríguez, the federal secretary of the hospitality sector at UGT, indicates that the employers' association has not yet transferred the idea of the pension plan to the unions, which will analyze it in detail. “It depends on how you approach it. You have to know the model in depth and speak it well,” he says.
The new regulation of employment pension plans, included in Law 12/2022 of July last year, includes advantages for companies and workers to join the idea. The former see Social Security contributions reduced and employee loyalty improved. The latter reduce their personal income tax, by raising the limit on the deduction of this tax for contributions to pension plans from 1,500 to 10,000 (8,500 are added to the 1,500 for joint company and worker contributions according to established scales).
The legislative changes also represent a new paradigm for the financial sector, accustomed to managing the individual savings of its clients. The association of investment entities Inverco has already warned of a foreseeable decrease in private pension plans due to this aspect starting this year. Until July, individual plans accumulated assets of 84,418 million euros, 512 million less than a year before.
Law 12/2022 also penalizes the deduction limits of private pension plans, which go from 2,000 euros to 1,500 euros. According to Inverco, this factor contributes to the fact that in 2022 individual plans closed for the second consecutive year with more exits than entries. The gap was almost 670 million, seven times more than in 2021.
However, the need for technical and professional management of employment plans is also giving opportunities to firms traditionally focused on private plans.
