The Catalan employers' association Foment del Treball has lamented the "lack of foresight and planning" of the Generalitat in view of the imminent entry into force of the obligation to contribute to work placements for vocational training (FP) students. Students on unpaid internships will have to be registered on January 1, 2024. This is a right for students who begin their working life in this way.
Given the feeling of "confusion, insecurity and concern" in the educational community, companies and families due to the lack of information about the new regulations, Foment del Treball has called in a statement to the "competent administration of Catalonia" to provide a solution that "guarantee legal certainty" for companies, training centers and students.
The Minister of Education announced on Monday that she would assume the management of registrations, but that she would do so only with publicly owned educational centers. However, the contribution bonus, 100% this year, and 95% from 2025, is for public and subsidized centers.
The Ministry informs that the concerted one is not excluded from the "consultation and assignment", but that technically the Generalitat cannot give registrations and cancellations in the name of a privately owned center. "The contribution account code is specific to each center," Education sources have explained.
Managers have a period of 20 days to process the registration (from December 21 to January 10). The department has explained that it will expand the current computer application (QVID) so that the centers include their students in internships and has created a team of 9 technicians to carry it out.
The subsidized centers will have to assume the management alone with the fatality that on December 21, Thursday, the institutes begin the school holidays and do not return until January 8, two days before the end of the period.
For Foment del Treball, "two weeks after the entry into force of the obligation there is no official forecast or planning that establishes legal certainty".
The obligation to contribute for internships responds to a modification of the General Social Security Law that includes Royal Decree 2/2023 on pension reform, approved in March, which aims to complete the reform of the public pension system.
Since then, the centers knew about this change, but were pending how the counseling would organize it. The measure came into force in the month of October, but several autonomous communities requested a moratorium and the date was postponed to January 1, 2024. Some autonomies hoped that this measure would not be implemented after the arrival of the PP to the Government.
The Catalan employers' association has valued the "training work" of Catalan companies and their "social commitment" to provide internships to students, but has warned companies to "act with caution and ensure that the scholarship recipients are registered in Social Security" to avoid sanctions.
The Catalan business fabric, Foment has highlighted, is fundamentally made up of small and medium-sized companies with less than 50 employed people, something that "often translates into fewer technical resources, time and less management capacity."
Likewise, 58% of training practices in Catalonia, the employers' association has added, are carried out in micro and small companies.
The general secretary of FP in the Government gave a message of calm yesterday declaring that it is the educational administration that must manage registrations to Social Security and that work has been done to make the administrative procedure simple. It requires, however, a computer modification in the applications of educational centers.
Given the doubts raised at the last moment, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has called a meeting with the Social Security technicians and all the autonomous communities, including those that already have it in operation so that they can explain to the rest how they have proceeded.
Last Monday, the general directorate of FP of the Department of Education presented a technical webinar with more than 600 FCT coordinators and members of management teams of public centers to inform them that the Catalan administration would take charge of management and that the centers would only They will have to include the name and Social Security number, associated with the school insurance, of the intern students. Likewise, they hoped to know more details about Thursday's meeting. There are about 150,000 students in public schools.
