Nowadays, all the communities are trying to save money in all the works and services that are necessary to be done. Sometimes they are just choosing among different possibilities or different companies in order to get the cheapest and better one, (which is completely fair and legal), but it is quite frequently to see how some communities directly save money in an illegal way.
In this article we are going to focus in the problem with the people working for a community and, unfortunately, there are many communities paying a salary to gardeners, cleaners, and other workers without a proper contract and without paying the social security, which might generate huge problems to the community.
Should the worker has an accident, the community will be the one to pay for the compensation, what might be extremely expensive because the social security will not cover anything and the community will have to be the one to pay for the time he is not working; for any possible physical damage the worker might have suffered, or even for the compensation to his relatives supposing he dies.
In addition to these possible compensations in case of accidents, the community will be fined by the Government in case there is someone working for the community without social security.
The problem could be even worse if the person working in the community is a foreigner from a non EU country, because in some cases this kind of illegal work on behalf of the community might even be considered a criminal offence under the Art. 312.2 of the Criminal Law of Spain, so the president, the administrator, or whoever has been involved in this kind of illegal agreement taken with the worker might face a sentence to prison from 2 to five years.
Even when the worker is Spanish or from an EU Country, the community could be involved in a criminal offence when the workers are not doing the work with all the legal measures to avoid accidents according to the rules approved by the Spanish Government ( “Prevencion Riesgos Laborales”) as it is establishes in the Art. 316 of the Criminal Law of Spain.
I have seen that many presidents, administrators or other officers of the community are very happy when they reduce the amount of the quotas saving money in any of the previous illegal way, but they are not aware the risks they are taking.
It is also surprising that many of the owners of these communities tend to be very proud of their presidents or administrators when they save a lot of money in works and services, and they never question if everything has been made legally and there is no risk to pay a compensation to the worker or his family or no risk to pay a fine. In fact many people do not want to be aware that in case the workers are not legally contracted, the community would be the one responsible, so all the owners will have to pay, without prejudice of the direct responsibility of the president, administrator, or the ones who took the illegal decision. Be very aware about the situation of the workers in your community to avoid unpleasant and very expensive surprises, and be properly advised by a legal and registered administrator about what to do in future.