One year after the labor reform was approved, the labor market snapshot looks more like a good exercise in fee liberalization to polish blemishes that have marked Spain’s employment history than a real change in the structural paradigm. nothing else. Although the composition of employment has changed radically in 2022, with the collapse of temporary hiring in new firms, the duality of the labor market has persisted against a seasonal backdrop that determines the pace of job creation and which will continue to control employers’ decisions. Although the implementation of the new regulations. One of the first conclusions to be drawn from the lengthy statistics generated by the labor reform, which was not fully published until March, is that companies sought formulas to maintain internal resilience despite the rigidity imposed by the reform by having exacerbated the signing of temporary contracts and the cancellation of works contracts. and services. We are now moving to the permanent part and non-continuous contract to cover temporary or intermittent staffing needs, which still exist. It is not surprising that these figures are certainly more stable and guarantee the worker’s rights than temporary employment contracts or employment contracts. In fact, one point that lawyers value outside of statistics is the change in some negative practices. Alfredo says: “Unlike other types of assessments, non-continuous permanent contracts are calculated for statistical purposes, as it could not be otherwise, because they are not specific. The fact is that labor reform in terms of employment has succeeded in correcting some behaviors which I think are positive says Alfredo Aspra, labor attorney and partner of Labormatters Abogados. Related News Standard No The government will support up to 20 types of contracts in 2023 to maintain job creation Gonzalo de Velarde Standard Yes Almost 280,000 workers signed more than one permanent contract in the same month in 2022 Gonzalo de Velarde «Fix Employment has meant an important shift in the labor market within the private sector,” lawyer and Lefebvre Social Area editor Angel Berrocal notes along the same lines, emphasizing that there is a noticeable trend of cultural change on the part of companies at the time of hiring. “Prioritizing permanent recruitment over Temporary, leading to a marked decline in favor of flexible indefinite employment.” In search of flexibility, it is precisely the emergence of these concepts of flexibility associated with permanent contracts that contributes to the paradox in analyzing the effects of the new regulations. To put them in context, it is appropriate to round the main numbers that explain This double reality: a sharp collapse in temporary hiring but an overgrowth in the way permanent contracts are far from the usual 40-hour weekly contract that has been used to accompany companies indefinitely. It is not.” On the one hand, as official figures from Census and from the Ministries of Labor and Social Security show, the temporary rate has dropped to a minimum over the past 15 years, going from 24 to 20%. at the end of the third quarter of the year. In the month of November, the total number of contracts registered during the month of November was 1,424,283 contracts. Of these contracts, 615,236 were of an unspecified nature (42% of the total). The number of temporary contracts signed, 809,047, is 2.125% lower than the previous month and 53.4% lower than a year ago. Backed up by the numbers, the figures so far support the executive’s monthly analysis praising the change in direction. Hence, of course, the statistics that approximate the reality of this change appear or disappear. Of the more than half a million permanent workers, 24.3% were part-time and 34.6% were part-time permanent workers. That is, six out of ten indefinite signatures are impregnated with temporal elements. The accumulated data for the year is even more telling: the partial constant has grown by 104.5% in the past 12 months and the non-continuous one by 525.9%. “Temporary employment characterized by precariousness is a reality that does not seem to have changed” Eva Hernández partner in charge of the Employment Law Department of Escalona & De Fuentes Abogados and two other factors determine the reality of the new permanent contract, the term themselves. Although 6,563,008 indefinite contracts were signed until November 2022, which is an increase of 4,623,451 (238.38%) over the same period in 2021, its duration is the lowest in recent years. Only in 2022 the average landline duration decreased from 52 to 45 days. On the other hand, permanent contract extinction increased by over 900% during the trial period. Statistical “lack of control” With this set of data, the role and nature of the non-continuous permanent contract can be explained. Difficulties in determining the terms of the temporary contract due to the conditions of production and in the absence of work and service, the companies “straightforward decided to use fixed-term non-continuous contracts, which have undoubtedly become the stellar contract of the fix”, Partner in Charge of the Employment Law Department of Escalona & De Fuentes Abogados, Eva Hernandez, indicates ABC. However, looking at the numbers, he acknowledges that “the needs of the labor market have not changed in a year.” Eva Hernandez asserts: “When we talk about temporality, it is often identified with instability, and that fact does not seem to me to have changed.” “The temporary contract is dropping significantly in favor of flexible indefinite contracts,” Angel Berrocal is a lawyer and social editor at Lefebvre. The labor expert points out that despite the fact that temporary contracts have “greatly reduced,” it should be noted that “the stats are out of control.” He warns that there are currently non-full-time permanent workers who are looking for work at another company for this multiple employee and “making ends meet”. He points out that “these do not appear as registered unemployed, but as job seekers.” In the same vein, Rita Fernández-Figares, partner at Everfive Abogados, explains to this medium that “the legal restriction has not put an end to temporary employment in practice” and that “the labor market should look for formulas to maintain flexibility according to your needs.” “The labor market had to look for formulas to maintain flexibility” Rita Fernandez-Figares Partner Everfive Abugados The legal expert emphasizes the idea that when the reason or time of a permanent contract is interrupted and the worker is temporarily laid off, this passes for unemployment. Thus, he says, despite the decrease in interim data in the stats, “the same job insecurity as before the reform persists.” Regarding this distortion, Alfredo Aspra points out that temporary contracts as such do not in fact disappear, “but the method of indefinite constancy does not reflect the temporality in which other modalities of temporary contracts were immersed in their nomenclature.”
