The rise of precarious work in Spain: the effects of the increase in labour market flexibility

The global financial and economic crisis had a strong impact on the Spanish labour market, especially with regard to job destruction and unemployment. The worrying situation in the Spanish labour market resulted in the adoption of multiple reforms that led to fundamental changes in the labour regulatory framework. The Spanish government and Parliament adopted a surprisingly high number of labour law reforms as 'anti-crisis measures', aimed at increasing labor market flexibility and eliminating the – according to the legislator – unnecessary rigidities of the labour regulation to foster job creation. The chapter analyses the effects on labour standards and employment protection of the labour reforms undertaken in the Spanish legal system in the past decades and suggests that these labour law reforms, in spite of aiming at fostering job creation, have introduced higher levels of labour market flexibility that resulted in an increase in formal and actual precariousness.