LGTBI people will be able to inform the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) about their sexual condition if they want to become a priority in the employment policies of the new Employment Law, which is already being processed in Congress, as confirmed by La Vanguardia .
Last June, the Council of Ministers approved the new Employment Law, "which will transform labor policies through training, guidance and support for unemployed people", and which considers several groups of "priority attention" : among them, LGTBI people.
As sources from the Ministry of Labor have explained to this newspaper, this is due to the fact that "although some companies do not take it into account, there are other companies that do not value positively" that a person is part of said group. For this reason, LGTBI people have been considered to belong to priority attention groups.
However, there is a nuance, and that is that according to the same government sources, SEPE employees cannot ask users about their sexual orientation. So, how can LGTBI people demonstrate that they are part of this group and, therefore, be considered part of the priority attention groups?
According to the Ministry of Labour, it must be the users themselves who, "voluntarily", notify the SEPE. And how can they prove it? From the Government they point out that, at the moment, the law that is being processed is "very generic" and that the way to prove it could depend "on the autonomous communities" or even "on each specific case".
From the Spanish Government they have also pointed out that "everyone is free to do what they consider", so that LGTBI people are not obliged to speak about their sexual orientation before the SEPE, and that the Employment Law "is not yet finished ", so it can still be changed.
For his part, the president of the Observatori against Homofòbia, Eugeni Rodríguez, gave a positive assessment of the Employment Law and highlighted in statements to La Vanguardia that it will be useful, especially "for the transgender group, since 80% of people trans hasn't entered the labor market yet."
At the same time, he recalled that "we have always asked for proactive actions to insert the LGTBI group into working life" and praised "the political intention" that there has been to promote this new Employment Law.
On whether he believes that users will have problems proving that they are part of the LGTBI collective, Eugeni Rodríguez has assured that "nobody says they are LGTBI if they are not". "And if he lies, he will end up knowing", she has concluded.
