Labor reforms of past 30 years have hit young people hardest

(Press-News.org) A study by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), analysing the impact of the labour reforms introduced over the past 30 years and the living conditions of new generations, asserts that these reforms have been the origin and cause of the current development model based on the exploitation of young people.

"The study indicates that the Spanish economic development model over the past three decades – with high rates of economic growth and job creation – is based on the 'over-exploitation of the youngest generations of workers'", Pablo López Calle, author of the paper, which has been published in the journal Ábaco, and a researcher at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of the UCM, tells SINC.

López Calle says this fact explains "the current economic crisis and its particular virulence in Spain", as well as the limited possibilities for future development.

The research was based on compiling and analysing statistical data on the effects of the labour reforms of the 1980s and 1990s on the living and working conditions of new generations of workers, as well as on 30 case studies of young people from Madrid with "sociologically significant" profiles.

"The 1984 and 1994 reforms saw new generations of workers joining the labour market in 'exceptional' conditions, which today have become completely 'normalised'", the study stresses.

The first major labour reform, in 1984, introduced "external flexibility" into the labour market – temporary contracts and reduced costs for firing employees. The second reform, in 1994, focused on the "internal flexibilisation" of human resources, with progressive individualisation of the process for negotiating salaries and working conditions, as well as the commissions-based part of the salary in the form of bonuses.

"These changes, aimed specifically at people joining the labour market for the first time, put some of the rights that had previously been incorporated in the Salary Statute on ice", the researcher points out.

An uncertain future

The rate of accidents at work – one of the social indicators most commonly used to measure the evolution of work intensity – "has not only risen over the past 15 years, reaching a peak in 2002, but has also been concentrated in companies with fewer than 50 employees, and has particularly affected young workers who have been in their job for less than a year and are on temporary contracts".

Today, a worker aged under 25 is four times more likely to suffer an accident than an older worker, according to the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work.

"With an unemployment rate of more than 30% in some regions and 200,000 jobs occupied by interns, the professional outlook for young Spaniards – and by extension the future of the country's productive system – seems uncertain", concludes López Calle.



INFORMATION:

Referencia bibliográfica: Pablo López Calle. "El impacto de las reformas laborales y la reorganización productiva en España sobre el empleo juvenil". Abaco: Revista de cultura y ciencias sociales 66 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Generación NI-NI), 2010.