Spain’s construction sector has made accessible to the authorities the 50 training centres the Construction Labour Foundation has all over Spain. The aim of this move is to take advantage of funds from Europe and train 200,000 people for later incorporation into the sector.
The president of the Foundation and of the construction employers’ association, Pedro Fernández Alén, said the objective is to take on workers from the tourism or hotel and catering sectors who are currently on temporary lay-offs, and then train them in the new techniques already being used in construction. The tourism and hotel and catering sectors are still heavily affected by the pandemic, with companies in difficulties that could lead their workers to permanent unemployment. Meanwhile, in contrast, the construction sector has already recovered all the employment lost since the outbreak of the health crisis and even surpassed it.
Moreover, in 2008, at the peak of the last major financial crisis, the sector employed around two million people and now around 1.3 million. As a result, together with government stimuli aimed at updating and modernising infrastructures, employability in this economic activity has a good chance of continuing to increase.
To this end, all the action plans included in the recovery programme are related to the construction sector, as it covers several areas that are now booming. These include rehabilitation, circular economy, waste management, home automation, operations in water infrastructures or in renewable energies such as wind or photovoltaic, amongst others.
