Preach by example

This week we learned that the Labor Inspectorate has opened a case against the Generalitat's Ministry of Culture regarding the situation of 207 interns during the years 2024 to 2026. According to the Inspectorate, they were performing structural tasks that corresponded to public employees. Social Security is claiming 2.16 million euros in unpaid contributions.

The department disagrees, has filed allegations and has appealed the claim. It defends the educational nature of the grants and recalls a previous ruling by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia that ruled in its favor in a similar case. We must respect the presumption of innocence and wait for the procedure to conclude. However, if the facts are confirmed, they would seem absolutely unacceptable to me.

In Catalonia there are 618,781 companies. Of these, 342,901 have no employees and 239,964 have between one and nine. In other words, 94% of Catalan companies have fewer than ten employees.

On this productive fabric we have offloaded a huge amount of labor, administrative, and documentary obligations. Temporary contracts have been restricted, the use of the discontinuous permanent contract has been expanded, and internship hiring has been regulated more rigorously. These have been forceful measures, necessary to protect the worker, and the small business owner must know them, apply them correctly, and assume the consequences if they are mistaken. It cannot be that the administration fails to comply, if this news is confirmed, with that which the small business owner must comply with rigorously by the demand of this same administration. It is painful.

We see something similar in terms of temporality. In 2026, the temporary employment rate in the public sector in Catalonia was 18.9%. In the private sector, it was 10.2%. The administration that demands job stability from companies maintains, within its own house, a temporality almost twice as high.

Small business owners have for years been expressing their exhaustion at a regulatory burden that does not stop growing. And they are accused of prioritizing their business profits over social progress. However, news like this explains their sense of grievance. They are demanded an administrative perfection that not even the administrations, with many more resources, seem capable of guaranteeing.

I do not ask for less protection for workers nor more tolerance for corporate abuses. I ask for the opposite: that those who legislate, control, and sanction apply to themselves, at the very least, the same level of requirement. The authority to demand does not come only from power; it also comes from example. And when the public sector demands stability, legality, and good labor practices from employers, it must begin by fulfilling them in its own house. Or, at the very least, that there be no doubts about it.