Noelia Acosta is the second vice president of the Association of Chartered Accountants (auditors) and a partner at Baker Tilly. Acosta, 49, asserts that her profession, to which she has been dedicated for 25 years, is subject to many regulatory changes that often arise in the wake of financial scandals. An expert in measuring the sustainability of companies and entities, she receives Companiesat the collegiate headquarters, the Torre Moré, a modernist mansion in the Barcelona neighborhood of Pedralbes, remodeled by the architect Òscar Tusquets, whom this organization, with some 2,000 members, will pay tribute to next Wednesday. Precisely on that day, they will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the creation of the association and its headquarters with challenges such as artificial intelligence (AI) and improving the balance between men and women. In the group as a whole, there is still a significant gap: 80% men and 20% women among the members. Among practitioners, the difference is reduced among those at the base: 65% men and 35% women. On the other hand, regarding executive partners, the presence of women is below 30%.

Pandora's box was opened by an internal email sent to their bosses by second-year junior auditors working at the Barcelona headquarters of the consulting firm EY, which spread like wildfire throughout the company, which in Spain has a staff of nearly 5,000 workers. The email, made public by the newspaper El País, denounced working weeks of these employees of 84 hours (the equivalent of 12 hours a day from Monday to Sunday or 16 hours from Monday to Friday), and all for salaries of 24,000 euros a year (about 1,300 euros for 14 payments). The letter includes complaints like this: "We have worked until late hours continuously from Monday to Sunday to get ahead a job that at no time we have been valued as it deserves". Or this one: "We have decided that it is time to intervene and raise our voices against working conditions that we consider far from the minimum acceptable".

Second-year auditors at consulting firm EY's Barcelona headquarters, who are between 23 and 25 years old, have had enough of working up to 84 hours a week (the equivalent of 12 hours a day from Monday to Sunday) for €24,000 a year. According to the newspaper El País this Tuesday, about thirty auditors have informed their bosses of their fatigue and discomfort with these endless days through a collective complaint sent by email. The newspaper specifies that the message was sent last Thursday to the Barcelona office partners and exposed, in addition to fatigue, lack of staff, exaggerated staff turnover or delivery deadlines that are impossible to meet. All this for a salary of €24,000 a year.