The open door to check service in Spain

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyse and offer an alternative for the organization of the social protection of domestic service, as well as for its protective action and funding possibilities, all of that from a comparative and critical perspective. In addition to this, it is going to be given an overview of the social security situation in domestic work, mainly in two European countries: Spain and France.

The proposed alternative in this research is the so-called Check Service System, which already exists in several European countries, taking the Universal Service Check (from this point forward CESU) as a specific model, currently in force in France.

In this sense, Spain and France represent two very different models of organization. The responses to their needs are developed by different social models as a solution to the growing need to provide adequate legal coverage to employed people in domestic service, due to the fact that, while Spain is an example of "domestic" care, France has already developed a policy of professionalizing such care.

However, as the article seeks to illustrate, these models not only respond to the consideration of professionalization, but also to other concerns and social phenomena, such as gender relations, international migration, labour market segmentation and employment policies. This way, the Check Service System is perfectly compatible with the conditions of domestic work in Spain, since its main objective is to regularise this situation by promoting or beginning some initiatives taking aim at regularising this work and its workers. As we already know, Spain's current regulation on this sector, there is a difficulty in accelerating the procedures, information to the parties and economic facilities on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the high rate of informal contracts. Therefore, it would be recommended to implement measures to encourage the joining to Social Security, thus dignifying this profession.