Background information

Royal Decree-Law 3/2012 is committed to vocational training that favours workers’ lifelong learning and the full development of their professional skills. The key is the recognition of vocational training as an individual right, with workers being granted paid leave for training purposes. This legal framework also provides that the Public Employment Services will grant each worker a training account linked to the Social Security affiliation number. Any employee with at least one year of seniority in a company is eligible for the training account.

Content of measure

This instrument was introduced with the Royal Decree Law 3/2012, regulated by the law 30/2015 and implemented by the Royal Decree 694/2017. It entitles workers who have worked in the same company for at least one year to take 20 hours of paid leave for professional training. These 20 hours are annual and can be accumulated for a maximum of 5 years. Furthermore, the public employment service provides each worker with a training account associated to her/his social security affiliation number. Thus, the training received by each worker based on the National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications is recorded in that account in order to work as electronic training history, including every life-long orientation and training activity of each worker, regardless of the modality, the place or the organisation where they training is implemented. Employers have to finance the period of working leave, but not the training cost itself.

The Royal Decree 694/2017 implemented law 30/2015 on the regulation of the vocational training system for employment in the workplace, introducing the regulation of the content of the training account (although this right requires to be further regulated and implemented at company level via collective agreement or by mutual agreement between employee and company). Likewise, this Royal Decree establishes that the training needs of companies and workers may be covered with training actions aimed at complying with the worker's right to paid leave of 20 hours per year of professional training (thus, the training account), and not only with training activities organised by the company.

Use of measure

Although there is no evidence of the concrete implementation of the training account, the tripartite national foundation for continuous professional training (FUNDAE) provides figures that show a huge increase in the number of professional training individual permits after the introduction, in 2012, of the law regulating this instrument: from 4,603 permits in 2011 to 17,152 in 2012, increasing to 28,885 in 2013. However, this number of permits has decreased since 2014 (12,435), to 5,584 in 2019 ( Fundae, 2020 ). However, there is no evidence to establish a close connection between the evolution of these figures and the effective implementation of the training account.

Some collective agreements such as the sectoral collective agreement of offices of the region of Madrid have regulated the right of paid leave for professional training as it appears in law 3/2012.

Strengths: The measure allows individuals, in a flexible way, to organise and adjust training to their needs and career expectations ( Elorza, 2017 ). Moreover, training is officially recognised according to the National Catalogue of Professional Qualifications ( Jalil Naji, 2018 ).

Weaknesses: Workers with less than one year of seniority in the company are excluded. Thus, the measure will not contribute to address one of the problems linked with the high rate of precariousness in the Spanish labour market, which is the low access to training of those temporary workers who spend less than one year in a company (as highlighted by Felgueroso et al., 2018 ). Moreover, the proposal does not include measures aiming to enforce this individual right to training. This issue is specifically relevant in SMEs, where employee representative structures and/or trade unions are absent.

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Employees in standard employment	Applies to all businesses	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
National government Public employment service	Employer

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Consulted	Consulted
Form	Consultation through tripartite or bipartite social dialogue bodies	Consultation through tripartite or bipartite social dialogue bodies

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Social partners jointly
• Main level of involvement: Peak or cross-sectoral level

Involvement

The Training Account is part of the Vocational Training System for Employment, developed by Royal Decree 694/2017. The most representative trade union and employers' organisations in the country were consulted in the preparation of Royal Decree 694/2017. According to Law 30/2015, which regulates the Vocational Training System for Employment, in general, trade unions and employers' organisations play an important role in the strategic design, planning, dissemination, monitoring and evaluation of vocational training for employment; therefore, social partners are always consulted on this matter.

Views and reactions

The social partners considered the proposal to be positive, as they have always advocated a register, by means of an electronic card or other official document, of the personalised individualised itinerary, including the guidance and training actions carried out by each worker throughout their lives.

Sources

• 03 October 2012: Royal Law Decree No. 3/2012 of 10 February (www.boe.es)
• 03 July 2013: Royal Decree No. 694/2017 of 3 July, implementing the Law No. 30/2015 of 9 September (www.boe.es)
• 30 September 2015: Law 30/2015 of September 9, which regulates the Vocational Training System for employment in the workplace. (www.boe.es)
• 07 November 2015: ADESEMA, UGT, CCOO et al. (2015), 'Sectoral collective agreement of offices of the region of Madrid', Spain (w3.bocm.es)
• 01 January 2018: Felgueroso, F., García-Pérez, J. I., Jansen, M.,(2018), 'La contratación temporal en españa: nuevas tendencias, nuevos retos', .Papeles de Economía Española (search.proquest.com)
• 26 March 2018: Jalil Naji, M., (2018), 'Industria 4.0, competencia digital y el nuevo Sistema de Formación Profesional para el empleo', Relaciones Laborales y Derecho del Empleo, vol. 6, no. 1, January-March 2018 (ejcls.adapt.it)
• 28 October 2022: State Foundation for Training in Employment (undated), Statistics of FUNDAE (Tripartite national foundation for continous proffesional training), web page (www.fundae.es)