THE REFORM OF NON-COMPETITIVENESS

The reform presented by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, far from promoting the necessary competitiveness of professionals, focuses on demonizing professional associations and imposing disproportionate tutelage, which in turn comes to subtract impartiality and proper and democratic criteria. of the schools.

This decaffeinated reform does not make anyone happy, and has only served to remove the foundations of our institutions so as not to face the real changes required by the professional world for its proper adaptation to the European Space.

In spite of everything, and now I regret it, from the beginning we have defended this reform because it seemed to be a competitive evolution of the professional world, and it would be naive and immobilistic, to refuse the necessary adaptation to the European and world level of professions, which It places us in a position of competitive equality.

We understand that these are difficult times to carry out according to what type of reforms, and we understand that there are still professionals who defend closed levels of activity, but we must reflect on what is best for society and not just for a few. If an increase in competitiveness in professionals is required, it is not possible to continue maintaining totally illogical barriers that impede professional development.

Someone in their right mind, understands that an industrial technical engineer can sign an industrial building of 200,000 square meters or more, the house of the guard of that ship and the residence where the workers of the same reside, and, however, have problems for sign a 50-square-meter farm building, you cannot project the home of that same guard when you are on residential land and, of course, you cannot sign that same residence when you are off industrial land. This is what we mean by the lack of competitiveness of our professionals, who are limited in their possibilities of action based on use and not their knowledge, which is not conceived in any society with development expectations.

If competition was really intended to be generated, similar rules of the game should be established for all professionals and enabled through colleges for professional practice, based on academic degrees and non-formal learning (experience and continuous training), such and as it is imposed in the European and world level. This would be a logical evolution and where the professional associations could carry out our function of transferring safety and quality, and of course a healthy competition between the professionals would be generated, which would intrinsically lead to a process of continuous improvement of our services, directly transferable to the increase. of competitiveness in our society. But it is also necessary to take into account that we are in the European Union where a single labor market is defined, and we not only have to be competitive with Spanish professionals, but also with those of other member states.

According to the European system for the recognition of qualifications, when they move to other EU countries, they are only allowed to carry out those activities for which they are authorized in accordance with Spanish regulations.

As this regulation is very restrictive, professional attributions are very segmented. Thus, Spanish professionals, especially engineers, are very limited to provide services outside Spain. On the contrary, European professionals, having a more open regulation in their State of origin, are entitled to practice in Spain in a much wider field of professional activities.

In short, it is a text that is far from the necessary reforms that the professional services sector should contain, and that nevertheless were perfectly described in the Normative Impact Analysis Report that accompanied the text in December 2013, but Once again, other particular interests are put before the general interest.

José AntonioGaldón Ruiz is president of the General Council of Industrial Technical Engineering.