Labour Market Institutions in Spain

• Authors: Sztyber W. B.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

In the first part of the paper the most important legal bases of the Spanish labour market, the labour relations and the employment policy are presented and the exceptional role of the constitution is emphasized. The constitution not only declares the right to work and to a pay sufficient to satisfy one's own and his family's needs, but also obligates the public authorities to create conditions conducive to economic and social progress and possibly equitable distribution of regional and personal incomes within the framework of the economic stabilization policy. The authorities have to conduct a policy aimed at full employment. The constitution attaches great importance to the development of social partnership both on the central and regional level and, on the microeconomic level, in the relations between employers and employees. The most important forms of such cooperative relations between the employers and the employees are collective negotiations and the resulting collective contracts that are endowed with binding power. In the second part of the paper, different kinds of collective negotiations and contracts, their development, their main objectives and their life periods are discussed in detail. The most important areas of negotiation are: the remuneration for work, the working time and the way of its distribution, as well as the employment contract system. The point of reference for pay agreements in the majority of collective contracts is the inflation forecasted by the government, supplemented with a guarantee clause allowing for possible underestimation of the inflation. More rarely, the last year's real inflation is adopted as pay increase basis. In the pay rise negotiations, beside the inflation, the increase in productivity is taken into account, too. In Spain, among the untypical employment contracts, those most frequent are term contracts. They make one third of all the employment contracts and their share is three times as high as in the EU15 countries on the average. The employment contracts for part-time work are much less developed than in the EU15 countries on the average. Within the framework of their employment policy, the public authorities tend, among other things, to limit the term employment in favour of no-term employment and a broader use of part-time employment contracts. The part-time employment facilitates reconciliation of occupation with family duties and, thereby, favours the increase in occupational activity and employment that, in Spain, stay below the average level for the EU15 countries. In addition, when observing the Spanish labour market, a trend towards shortening the duration of full-time work and lengthening the duration of the part-time work can be noted.

Keywords

EN

EMPLOYMENT (SPAIN); LABOUR MARKET (SPAIN)

Discipline

• ECONOMICS: ECONOMICS

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski. Wydział Nauk Ekonomicznych
• Journal: Ekonomia. Rynek, Gospodarka, Społeczeństwo
• Year: 2004
• Issue: 14
• Pages: 108-136
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Sztyber W. B.

• W. B. Sztyber, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Wydzial Nauk Ekonomicznych, ul. Dluga 44/50, 00-241 Warszawa, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

05PLAAAA0040990