Entrepreneurs warn of a lack of labor “in all sectors”

Employers are concerned about the increasing difficulty in filling job vacancies. They cannot find enough workers to complete their templates. This was announced this Wednesday by Andrés Sendagorta, president of Sener, the Basque engineering and technology multinational, and the Family Business Institute (IEF) during their annual meeting of members. “We are witnessing the apparently contradictory verification that, with the highest unemployment figures in our environment, our companies have extraordinary difficulties in meeting personnel needs throughout the entire range of the production chain. There is not a single sector of activity that is not affected by this problem. This is a problem that affects all sectors and all levels of qualification”.

The labor market has withstood the onslaught of the crises unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine with unexpected strength. Companies have continued hiring despite the effects of the energy crisis, the uncontrolled rise in prices or the financial turmoil caused by the rise in interest rates. The number of employed workers reached 20.6 million people last April, the highest level since the start of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite this, Spain was one of the developed countries in the world where wages decreased the most real due to inflation, according to the OECD. The international organization calculates that Spanish workers suffered a loss of 5.3 points of purchasing power last year while company margins grew.

In recent months, it is common to see how hoteliers complain that they cannot find waiters at the beginning of the tourist season. Transport companies also lament the shortage of drivers in a sector, logistics, which erupted with the pandemic. The construction has vacancies for more than 100,000 workers that it is unable to fill. And the big engineering companies and consultancies warn that they cannot find young people with the adequate training to face the challenges of the future. “It’s not just about the difficulty of finding aerospace engineers. That also. We have real and recent examples of initiatives to train drivers for transport in Morocco or Poland given the impossibility of meeting these needs in our country”, pointed out Sendagorta.

On the same day that the CEOE and Cepyme employers have signed, together with the unions, UGT and CC OO, the salary revaluation agreement, the president of Sener has indicated: “We have to be very attentive to adequately remunerate our people, maintaining competitiveness of the companies”. While he has added: “Any solution requires accepting an essential premise: to continue, to advance, our companies need to be viable and competitive. For this reason, productivity, efficiency and commitment must be the central axes of the debate by everyone”.

educational pact

During his speech before the members of the club, made up of a hundred family companies that together employ more than 1.1 million workers and group a global turnover of 172,000 million euros, the equivalent of about 14% of the Spanish GDP, Sendagorta has claimed the need to reflect and seek an agreement to reform the “deficient educational system”. The president of the IEF has stressed that family-based companies make efforts to promote and encourage dual training and professional training, but has recognized that “they are not enough”. That is why he has proclaimed: “A great political and social consensus is necessary and urgent to abort this problem.” Companies managed by children or grandchildren of the founders of companies such as Inditex, Acciona, Mercadona, Ferrovial or the Barceló Group, among others, participate in the IEF.

The annual businessmen’s conclave was awaited with interest after the darts launched from some government partners at the businessmen. The relationship between La Moncloa and the group of executives and directors of family companies is affected after the rudeness of the chief executive, Pedro Sánchez, in the last two annual congresses of the Family Business Institute (IEF). “We live in days of a lot of background noise. Noise, which is added to what is usual in pre-election periods. A noise that polarizes and creates sterile confrontations. Family businessmen are not the enemy of anyone and we are very aware of the essential role that corresponds to us in our model of society”, the Basque executive proclaimed during the closing speech of the annual assembly. “Discussions take place that in the best of cases do not distract from our activity at a time of rapid change and great opportunities,” he added.

“We are no one’s enemy”

The Sánchez government hardened its discourse against businessmen from the summer of 2022, when it had to fight in Congress to face the debate on the State of the nation and recover the initiative after the setbacks of the Andalusian elections. With this twist, Sánchez regrouped the investiture coalition to approve the 2023 Budgets, which were essential to extend the legislature until the end of this year. For this reason, Sendagorta recalled: “We do not ask for favors nor do we want privileges. We only ask that we be heard, that we be taken into account and that we are allowed to compete in the world, without burdens or disadvantages. Today we continue to say the same. We must recover a climate of shared adventure, of a common project”. And at that moment he had an impact: “Recent statements by some people in the government do not go precisely in that direction.”

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