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Self-employed work has traditionally been governed within the framework of private law legal relations. As a result, regulatory references to self-employed workers are scattered throughout the legal system as a whole. Within the social regulatory sphere, particular mention should be made of the General Social Security Act, which covers the Special Scheme for Self-Employed Workers.
There is currently an ongoing effort to establish specific legislation for self-employed work as a distinct category. A comparative review of the legal landscape across other European countries reveals a similar picture to Spain: regulation of the self-employed employee remains dispersed throughout the wider legal framework.
From a socio-economic perspective, self-employment has grown significantly in high-income countries and today represents a free choice for many individuals who value their independence and the ability to work on their own terms. For all these reasons, the importance and impact of the draft Self-Employed Workers' Statute, which has already been approved, deserves particular attention.
The definition of a self-employed employee is set out as follows: "persons who, on a regular basis and in a personal and direct capacity, carry out an economic or professional activity for profit on their own account and outside the direction and organisation of another person, whether or not they employ workers."
This draft legislation establishes a set of basic rights and duties for self-employed professionals. Regarding the duties imposed on self-employed workers, there is nothing new that was not already covered by existing social legislation: the obligation to comply with fiscal and tax requirements, the obligation to register with the Social Security system, and so on.
Of greater interest are the rights granted to self-employed workers: the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to work-life balance, the right of association, and the right to the collective defence of their professional interests, a group which, according to official statistics, numbers over one million in Catalonia and more than three and a half million across Spain as a whole.
With regard to Health and Safety at Work, public authorities will take on a supervisory and enforcement role in ensuring compliance with existing regulations, while promoting specific training tailored to the particular circumstances of self-employed workers.
Economically dependent employee
Economically dependent self-employed workers are those who carry out an economic or professional activity for profit on a regular, personal, direct, and predominantly exclusive basis for a single individual or legal entity, referred to as the client, on whom they are economically dependent, receiving from that client at least 75% of their income from employment and economic or professional activities.
The defining characteristics of economically dependent self-employed workers are as follows:
· They do not employ paid third parties to carry out the activity contracted with the client.
· They do not perform their activity jointly or interchangeably with workers providing services under any contractual arrangement on behalf of the client.
· They have their own productive infrastructure and resources, necessary for carrying out the activity and independent from those of the client, where such infrastructure has economic relevance to the activity.
· They organise their work according to their own criteria, without prejudice to any general technical guidance they may receive from the client.
· They receive remuneration based on the results of their activity, in accordance with what has been agreed with the client, and bearing the associated commercial risk.
As mentioned at the outset, the draft Bill on the Statute of Self-Employed Workers has already been approved. At Assessorament i Consell, we will continue to monitor the progress of this legislation and keep you informed of any developments as they arise.
