La intermediación laboral y las modalidades de contratación desde la perspectiva de la flexiseguridad

Abstract

As anticipated by its title, this paper analyses labour intermediation and types of employment contracts from the perspective of flexicurity. To carry out this analysis, the paper is divided in two parts which are clearly differentiated. The first part focuses on identifying the relationship that exists between flexicurity, on the one hand, and labour intermediation and types of employment contracts, on the other. The conclusion that we reached was that there is an instrumental relationship among them. In particular, that flexicurity is the end and the regulation of labour intermediation and types of employment contracts is one of the legislative body’s means to achieve it. On the basis of this conclusion, the second part of the paper analyses if the Spanish regulation of each of these matters is aligned with the flexicurity’s principles that are promoted by the European institutions. Our conclusion was that, from a normative point of view, the Spanish regulation of labour intermediation and types of employment contracts is fully aligned with the principles of flexicurity. In particular, that the Spanish legislator has followed the European Commission’s recommendations on these matters, so that its employment market is more «flexisecure». Methodologically, this is a theoretical paper. With this statement we want to underline that we have interpreted the regulatory framework, focusing our attention on the European instruments and the Spanish regulation of these matters. For this reason, the actual impact of these policies on the Spanish employment market is not included within the scope of our paper. Continuing with the description of our methodology, to identify the instrumental relationship between flexicurity and the types of employment contracts and labour intermediation, we centred our efforts in the so-called «Common Principles of Flexicurity» and the «Flexicurity’s Pathways» published by the European Commission in 2007. To review if the Spanish regulation was aligned with flexicurity, we verified if the Spanish legislative body had followed the pathway towards flexicurity suggested by the European Commission. In other words, if the Commission’s recommendations of how to regulate labour intermediation and types of employment contracts under a flexicurity model had been followed. Broadly, this is the summary of our paper, which we resume by sections below. The first three sections («Introduction», «The current relevance of flexicurity» and «The concept of flexicurity»), introduce the issues that are treated throughout the paper. We wanted to underline the importance of studying flexicurity, since it is the employment relations model that has been adopted by the European Union and, consequently, by Spain. Likewise, we deemed it necessary to include a brief definition of the concept, highlighting that under the flexicurity model, labour stability, traditionally linked to a specific position, is replaced by the employees’ employability during their whole career. This is, the capacity of the employees to be and remain employed. These initial sections are the grounds to analyse the relationship between flexicurity and types of employment contracts and labour intermediation under the section titled «An instrumental relationship. Flexicurity (as the end) and labour intermediation and types of employment contracts (as the means)». Here we explain, using several European instruments, why such instrumental relationship exists. After reaching this conclusion, the next section, «The Spanish pathway towards flexicurity», describes the European Commission’s recommendations on labour intermediation and types of employment contracts to Member States such as Spain. This section of the paper is key, since to review the regulation of these matters in Spain, our method was to contrast the Spanish regulations against the European Commission’s recommendations. In other words, this section develops the theoretical framework for the second part of the paper. The «Labour intermediation» section includes a brief definition of the concept and it explains where it is regulated in the Spanish legislation. After this exercise, we described the measures adopted in Spain to strengthen the Public Employment Services, including their cooperation with other social agents, as well as the efforts to extend the collectives which are targeted by labour intermediation policies. This analysis led us to the conclusion that the regulation of labour intermediation in Spain is aligned with the European Commission’s recommendations. We conducted a similar exercise under the section titled «Types of employment contracts». After a short deliberation on the types of employment contracts, we described several measures, but not all of them, adopted by Spain to: (i) make contracts more flexible; (ii) correct the regulation of the dismissals based on objective grounds; (iii) improve the situation of temporary employees; and (iv) limit the chaining of fixed-term employment contracts. After this analysis we reached the conclusion that Spain has followed the European Commission’s recommendations on this matter too. The paper finishes with a conclusion, that outlines its findings and invites other authors to research if the adoption of the European Commission’s recommendations have actually transformed the Spanish employment market, making it more «flexisecure», reducing its segmentation and its structural unemployment.