Poverty Watch Spain | Poverty Watches Overview 2020 & 2021

Income protection:

• As the Final report of the United Nations Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty to Spain underlines, COVID-19 has revealed major flaws in public policies to combat poverty in Spain. The data from the Living Conditions Survey certify the need to continue promoting and defining measures such as the Ingreso Mínimo Vital, placing the benefit above the poverty threshold, as well as its coverage so that it reaches all the people who need it. Therefore, it is crucial to fully develop the protective capacity of this minimum income scheme in terms of accessibility, coverage, adequacy and enabling capacity.
• EAPN has consistently worked on the topic of decent wages, and this mainly since 2010 in the framework of a long-standing thematic focus on fighting in-work poverty and promoting quality jobs and employment as part of integrated active inclusion policies. One key insight guiding EAPN’s policy and advocacy work is that not any job is a sure route out of poverty and that many people are in employment, but still face financial hardship and/or social exclusion. A second main guiding theme for EAPN is that, for employment to fulfil its role of effectively shielding people from a life in poverty, it needs to fulfil a set of quality criteria. Broadly in line with trade union requests, for EAPN quality jobs are those with decent standards on pay and other work-related benefits, decent working conditions, good health and occupational safety protection, and access to lifelong learning and career prospects. Therefore, EAPN has consistently called for an EU framework on minimum wages which follows these criteria.
• Under Key Principle number six, which deals with wages, the European Pillar of Social Rights lays down the following three commitments: one, the right of workers “to fair wages that provide for a decent living standard”; two, the commitment to ensure “adequate minimum wages … in a way that provide for the satisfaction of the needs of the worker and his / her family”; and three, the commitment to prevent “in-work poverty”. Minimum Wages are key for ensuring fair working conditions and decent living standards for all workers in the EU. They are essential to protect low-wage workers and to prevent in-work poverty. It is crucial to protect income from employment and grant that jobs are decent and provide sufficient income, so that a decent standard of living can be maintained. With the current long-term unemployment rates, it is essential to promote active policies in favor of people with a greater risk of exclusion from the labor market, also counting on market reserve contracts. Measures must be established against precarious and ultra-precarious employment, the abusive use of “scholarships” and false self-employment, formats that promote the existence and growth of the rate of poor workers and job insecurity. The conciliation between care (of children and adults) and employment must be widespread, effective and affordable.
• The pension system should provide an adequate standard of living. Social protection and, particularly, the pension system are key Welfare State’s hallmarks in Spain. At least three aspects that require corrective measures are the outdated amounts with respect to the CPI, the feminization of the lower amounts and the negative impact on rural areas (51% of people over 65 years of age live in municipalities with less 1,000 inhabitants and 74% in those with less than 100 inhabitants).
• Income guarantee policies should contemplate corrective actions for gender inequality. Women are more affected by lower wages, involuntary part-time hours, the wage gap with respect to men and the greater dedication of time to reproductive care, all of which have an impact on their lower income in the active and active ages. passive. Income guarantee policies must introduce mechanisms to promote and monitor equal opportunities and non-discrimination.
• The authorities, social actors and civil society organizations must put an end to the expansion of discrimination, which is spread to other sociodemographic characteristics, such as age, nationality, ethnic origin, disability, family situation, sexual orientation, rurality, among other factors, as it is provoking increasing inequalities in the labour market, in household income and in access to opportunities.