From January 1 to August 31, among the companies that are part of the ASCER tile employers' association there have been a total of 41 temporary employment regulation files, affecting 5,416 employees. If the figure is updated this September, there are a total of 47 ERTEs and a total of 5,752 employees affected.
Companies seek to take measures that make economic viability sustainable, and stoppages in production or the presentation of ERTE are a key tool. It should be added, however, that from the tile employers' association they remember that they do not have figures of the approved ERTEs that are currently in execution, nor of how many companies have presented various files in a certain period.
The figure does give an idea of the magnitude of the effect of the energy crisis in the ceramic sector, especially when in June the number of ERTEs in the sector was thirty. Between December 1 and March 15, 20 ERTEs were registered, affecting 3,490 workers, which reveals the worsening of the economic situation in the sector.
An example of the last ERTE activated in the sector is that of Azuliber, of the Pamesa Group, which has stopped its production with an ERTE for productive and organizational reasons as a consequence, they explained, of "the current unsustainable situation, caused by the high prices of gas , to which we must add regulatory uncertainty".
Already in March, the president of ASCER explained that there were "numerous" files that were being negotiated and those that were going to be presented in the coming weeks. "They can become job extinctions if the situation is not improved," Vicente Nomdedeu, president of the employer's association, pointed out at the time.
This encrypted, after an internal survey among its associates, that the sectoral energy bill increased by 126% in 2021, to 939 million euros. From this, it was derived that the extra cost in the sectoral energy bill was 524 million euros and the weight of the cost of energy in 2021 accounted for 19% of the total billing.
