Madrid tells labor centers to prioritize jobseekers who still receive benefits

The Popular Party-run Madrid regional government has created a pilot scheme in four official employment offices that gives priority in finding work to younger, better qualified workers who have yet to use up all of their entitlement to unemployment benefits at the expense of older workers.

According to a document prepared by the Madrid employment department, to which radio station Cadena SER has had access, four of the region's employment offices have received written instructions to find jobs for workers aged between 20 and 45 who have high-school diplomas that give access to university studies and are still receiving unemployment benefits — ahead of older workers no longer entitled to benefits.

Workers are entitled to a maximum of two years' unemployment benefit. Thereafter, the long-term unemployed receive only a minimum safety-net payment of 400 euros a month.

A civil servant at one of the offices selected for the pilot scheme, which was launched in February, said she had received instructions to first filter out those no longer entitled to unemployment benefits when helping people find a job. "In that way, people who are most in need are not receiving job offers," she said.

The normal practice at employment offices in the case of two candidates with the professional profile demanded of employers has been to give priority to the candidate who has been out of work the longest.

People who are most in need are not receiving job offers"

The regional employment department said that if the experimental scheme proved successful, it would be extended to all of the region's 42 employment offices. However, they insisted this did not mean that unemployed people not fitting the identified profile would remain unattended.

Newswire Europa Press quoted the regional commissioner for employment, Ana Isabel Mariño, as saying that the measure was aimed at "modernizing employment offices."

Mariño said the scheme was open to "both those receiving unemployment benefit and those who are not."

She said unemployment offices "should not just be the place where people go to receive their benefits or sign on as unemployed but also one where there is dialogue between employers and the unemployed."

The regions in Spain are responsible for running employment offices but not for labor policy or for paying unemployment benefits. Cadena Ser quoted sources at the national Labor Ministry as denying instructions had been given to the regions to shift their priorities when helping jobseekers.

You cannot play with the dramatic situation of millions of people"

The congressional spokesman for the ruling Popular Party, Alfonso Alonso, on Tuesday said the government's priority was to find work for the young, the long-term unemployed and those who receive only the safety-net payment.

One of the civil servants at the employment office where the experimental scheme is in place claimed that the regional employment office had also imposed quotas for sanctions imposed on the unemployed who abuse the benefit system by, for example, working in the black market while continuing to claim unemployment benefits. "Anyone who is sanctioned loses a month's unemployment benefit," she said.

The civil servant said there had also been a big increase in the number of jobless people called into employment offices for orientation courses. "Through such practices, which entail massive summonses to catch out the unemployed person who does not turn up, the number of people who receive some form of benefit who have been punished has increased fivefold," she said.

Pedro Gallego, an official at the UGT labor union, said such practices formed part of a strategy to drastically reduce spending on unemployment benefits, for which the budget for this year has been reduced from that of 2012 despite official forecasts of a further increase in the jobless rate.

The number of people out of work in Spain hit a record 6.2 million in the first quarter, with the jobless rate rising to 27.2 percent.

The congressional spokesman for the Plural Left, José Luis Centella, described as "aberrant" the practice of imposing directives on the "profile" of the jobless for deciding who should receive a work contract. The only rationale behind this, he argued, was "to avoid the state having to continue to pay unemployment benefits."

"You cannot play with the situation of millions of people who are going through a dramatic situation," Centella said.

The congressional spokeswoman for the main opposition Socialist Party, Soraya Rodríguez, said it was "cruel" to "discriminate" against the long-term unemployed and those aged over 45.