The Popular Party unsuccessfully pressured the CEOE not to sign the labor reform, tried and almost succeeded in overthrowing it in the Congress of Deputies, and now seeks to discredit its results. When the Government boasts of a record of indefinite contracts, the popular ones reply that a good part are part-time and going even further, that the star contract of the labor reform, the so-called discontinuous fixed, what it does is "make up" unemployment, that we are going to an “indefinite precariousness”
Not everyone says it. This is affirmed by its president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who complains that what were previously temporary contracts are now permanent discontinuous ones, thus hinting that there are no differences between the two categories.
The truth is that there are important differences between these two types of contract. The main one is that the discontinuous permanent contract, designed to deal with the seasonal jobs so frequent in Spain, is an indefinite contract, with the additional guarantees that this entails; with the particularity that it is suspended and activated in certain periods. In any case, the company has the obligation to call the employee for the subsequent period, which gives guarantees to the worker who does not provide the temporary contract. They accumulate seniority and in case of dismissal, they maintain the same rights.
“They represent a better guarantee in all senses for the workers”, comments Fernando Luján, confederal secretary of the UGT,
Article 16 of the Workers' Statute specifies that "they will have the right to have their seniority calculated taking into account the entire duration of the employment relationship and not the time of services actually provided, with the exception of those conditions that require another treatment in care to his nature." In other words, the seniority of the entire period is added, both that of activity and inactivity, with the question of whether it would also count all the time for severance pay. Here, there is a calculated ambiguity, which the CEOE interprets as a no, that in this case it would only compute the effective time worked, while the unions say that the courts will have to interpret it. The truth is that until now, the judges have been inclined to only count the active periods for the calculation of severance pay.
What Feijóo is right about is that these workers, during the period of inactivity, do not count in registered unemployment. It happened before and it happens now. The same thing happens with workers covered by an ERTE who, during periods of cessation of activity, do not add to unemployment.
With regard to those affiliated to Social Security, the discontinuous permanent ones count as affiliates when they are active and stop counting as such during periods of inactivity.
Criticism from Feijóo and the popular ones in general are focusing on this contract because it is becoming a central element of the labor reform. Of the 730,000 new permanent contracts created in May, a record in the historical series, 36% were permanent discontinuous contracts, while the rest were divided between 40% who were full-time and 24% part-time.
That increase makes sense. because the reasons to justify a temporary contract have been limited and five types of discontinuous fixed contracts have been established. They include the seasonal, the intermittent, which replace the old regular fixed, considered in practice a part-time contract; the one assigned to contracts or concessions, one specific for the public administration and a fifth for temporary employment agencies.
