It all started one afternoon at a Starbucks, where former gymnast and Olympic medalist Almudena Cid had a coffee with fellow Olympic skier Lola Fernández Ochoa. There, both elite athletes They decided to get going to fight for the social protection of this group, the vast majority of whom dedicate a good part of their working life to the highest level of sport, as they prefer to call it, without contributing to Social Security. The lack of a clear framework within the system or the absence of information about the aid they can receive to be self-employed has led to the majority of these athletes finding themselves with a diminished contribution career and meager pensions, in the case of achieving the right to have them.
This fight, which was later joined by another group of athletes, in this case hired professionally but at a time when they were not contributing, and led by the former basketball player and also Olympic medalist Fernando Romay, has reached Congress this week of the Deputies. A conference promoted by UGT on The professional career of high-level athletes: contributions and retirement. In a packed room and before the president of the Higher Sports Council (CSD), José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, athletes, gymnasts, cyclists and basketball players recounted how, after several decades of exclusive dedication to their sports careers, their listing careers began when They retired, with the difficulties that this entails in achieving a complete working career and, therefore, a decent pension.
“These professionals give part of their lives to shake the entire society, to make us shine and with 35 years of profession they have not contributed. Having given yourself body and soul cannot be devoid of a Social Security contribution,” said Cristina Estévez, secretary of Institutional Policy and Territorial Policies of UGT and union negotiator on pensions. “They take us out of our homes so that the federations can obtain results,” laments Cid, for whom many Olympic medalists feel “that that medal is in the bottom drawer because it has not solved anything in your life nor does that effort appear anywhere.”
But what is the problem? Why don’t these sports professionals contribute? Among the keys to finding answers to these questions is, among other things, the differentiation between a professional athlete and a high-level one. In the former, it is usually clear that they maintain an employment relationship with an employer or commercial relations with their sponsors, but in the case of high-level athletes, the vast majority of them do not have an employer. In that case, it seems that it would be easy for them to have to contribute as self-employed, but this has not always been possible according to the legislation.
“In the 80s, the law, although it mentioned us, did not allow us to contribute as an employee or as a self-employed person and at that time that was not so important, it was not given importance because it did not take so many years to even collect the pension. nor to receive 100% (of the regulatory base),” explained José Rodríguez García, who made a career as a professional and Olympic cyclist. However, now 15 years are required to be entitled to collect a retirement pension and to calculate its amount the last 25 years of contributions are taken into account and 36.6 years of contributions are required to collect 100% of the pension to which you are entitled. has the right.
These conditions are almost impossible to achieve for an elite athlete if he does not start contributing from the beginning of his sporting career. “The idea is that all professionals have to contribute to Social Security. The problem with the world of sports is at what point they are considered professionals, but if it is a profession, they have to contribute to the system,” said Nicole Marco, advisor to the Secretary of State for Social Security of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security. and Migrations. Marco, who has been a Social Security lawyer for more than 25 years, explained in a didactic presentation that although the regulations would allow the creation of a new special contribution regime, “the trend is the opposite, that all the regimes converge so that the entire world has the same rights.”
Aid that does not run out
In any case, this Government advisor on Social Security defends the need to “specify the legal regime of (elite athletes) who perform their services on their own account, who should be included as self-employed, creating a specific registry ”. Currently, the Government approves aid worth three million euros annually to help these high-level athletes pay their self-employment fees for those who request them. “The problem is that you have to advance the fees for the entire year and then claim payment from the Higher Sports Council and there are many people who cannot advance that payment (of about 3,000 euros per month),” complains Álvaro Martín, who comes to win a gold and a bronze in the Paris games.
This athlete is about to retire at the age of 30 and has been registered with Social Security since 2018. But he attributes this to the fact that he has been fortunate with his federation: “He tells me how I have to do to register, the process, the “You help… but not everyone is that lucky, other federations don’t do it.” In fact, of the three million euros available to the CSD annually, only 1.7 billion have been spent. The advisor to the cabinet of the presidency of that organization, Nerea Huete, who also participated in the day, sings the mea culpa: “Athletes do not know enough about these aids. They also do not know of other very good aids to conciliation; “Sometimes we have tools and they are not effective enough.”
However, according to data provided by retired cyclist José Rodríguez, there are almost 4,100 high-level athletes out of a total of 5,781 who have not received this aid. That is to say, if all of them requested them, with the current budget of three million euros it would only be enough for each one to pay for three months of the self-employed contribution.
In this scenario, those attending this day agreed on the need to create, as provided for in the Sports Law of 2022, an Athlete Statute, which legally regulates all these issues and includes, if the legislator accepts it, some type solution for athletes closer to retirement, who no longer have time to contribute to obtain a pension or improve it. What this statute will have to clarify is who is responsible for the contribution: the athlete exclusively, public institutions, federations or clubs.
The promoters of this movement in defense of the social protection of high-level athletes, Almudena Cid and Lola Fernández Ochoa, are clear about this and point directly at the federations as the main responsible for the contributions of these elite athletes in one way or another. “Most of us support the club we belong to by paying dues,” says Cid, “and then we belong to a federation that never gives anything back to the athletes, and we have to ask the club to pay our dues? “That’s impossible.” “The only thing we ask is that our effort be quantified and that it appear in our work life history,” he adds.
For her part, skier Lola Fernández Ochoa assured that they also fight for those who are active now: “I don’t know who the employer is, I think it is the federation, all the federation presidents should be here and there is only one.” he reproached. In short, he urged the federations to “get a little more involved.”
But this fight is not only for active athletes, but former athletes, especially older ones, also demand solutions to their situation and in their case with greater urgency. Romay called himself on this day as a representative of “the silver generation” and mockingly said that “not because of the medal that the Spanish basketball team won in the Los Angeles games but because all its members have gray hair.” And he claimed: “We ask that the taxed years – because he specified that they did pay the Treasury “as artists and bullfighters because there was no other heading” but they were not allowed to contribute – in some way or another be computed as taxed, because that will allow us to be able to reach 100% and not just the minimum pension.”
Several attendees agreed that the possibility of improving pensions, as well as achieving the minimum 15 years required to collect a contributory retirement pension, could be achieved with a model similar to the one approved for scholarship recipients, according to which they can “buy” for a time the contribution years in which they enjoyed the scholarship but the company did not contribute for them.
The president of the Higher Sports Council, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, present in all the interventions, considered that social protection for these sports professionals “is a moral duty.” “We have to ensure that it is reflected in decisions with the creation of the Athlete’s Statute, which includes full protection,” he concluded.
