The endemic situation of temporary employment in Spain as a justification for a necessary review of its regulatory framework

Abstract

The Spanish employment system formally reserves, especially since 1997, the use of temporary contracts to cover temporary jobs. However, our high temporary employment rates show an excessive use of this type of contract in comparison with other European Union countries. This paper, focusing on structural temporary work, aims to highlight how the various regulatory reforms that have taken place since the approval of the Spanish Workers’ Statute have not guaranteed the effectiveness of the principle of causality and how, only very recently, does it seem that a task of reconstructing this principle based on the requirement of genuine temporality is beginning.