Only 5 of Ibex's 35 companies have an equality plan in place

MADRIDThis is the first International Women's Day in which companies with over 50 workers that have not a registered an equality plan can face fines of up to €7,500. Yesterday, Monday, was the deadline for all these companies to inform labour authorities of the implementation of this plan, which is regulated by law, within the company. Although the compulsory nature of this rule as such is not new – since 2007 companies with over 250 workers were required to have one – the threshold of the requirement, which has been decreasing until reaching 50 workers, is new.

Although this limit was announced in 2019 and companies have had a period of more than two years to include the measure, not all of them have done their homework in time. According to the latest data provided by the Ministry of Labour, of the 35 companies that make up Spanish stock market index Ibex 35, only five have an equality plan in force, while five more companies have started procedures to register it and two have have expired plans. The rest, 23 companies, have not informed the labor authority of their intention to implement it. "94% of the Ibex companies tell you that they have equality policies, but it is not the same, because the plans are regulated by law," recalled Carmen Sampayo, president of the gender commission at the General Council of Economists.

However, of the 30,024 companies obliged to have such a plan, only 4,700 have one in force, according to the latest data published by the Ministry of Labour. In other words, only 15.6% of these companies, which employ 8.3 million people, have complied with the procedure. However, the figure is not exact, because, as the labor authority itself recognises, companies often do not register the plans or are still getting them processed.

Failure to comply with this obligation is classified by law as a serious infringement of labour relations and, therefore, fines can range from €751 euros to €7,500 for companies. In addition, if it is the Labor Inspectorate itself that requires the company to have a plan – in recent years controls have been intensified to detect whether companies were complying with the rule – the fines can amount to €225,000.

Equality plans are negotiated between companies and workers to achieve "equal treatment and opportunities between men and women in the workplace and to eliminate discrimination based on sex".