The Generalitat has presented this Thursday a plan to the unions to convert the bulk of temporary civil servants in the Catalan administration into permanent staff. With this plan to reduce temporality, the Government wants to comply with state regulations that require temporal staff to make up under 8% of workers

"We are feeding a time bomb". So says economist and president of human resources company ICSA Group, Ernest Poveda, before "the abuse" of temporary contracts that has monopolised the Spanish labour market for years, focusing mainly on less skilled jobs. The data prove him right. According to the State's Public Employment Service (SEPE), during the first seven months of 2021 the average duration of contracts is under two months, specifically 54.1 days. The figure is more alarming - says the economist - if you consider that the economic crisis of covid has not had any impact, since compared with recent years is a little longer. In 2007, in times of supposed economic bonanza, the median duration of contracts was 78.6 days; 2013, in full financial crisis, fell to 53.3 days, and 2019, before the pandemic broke out, it reached historic lows by dropping for the first time below 50 days. "Short-term employment has become chronic and there is an abuse of temporality and this causes instability for many workers, who have one contract after another, something that directly affects the economy and especially consumption, because a person who is in this situation does not consider buying a home or a vehicle," he exemplifies.

The changes in hiring that will be included in the labor reforms will go beyond the simplification of contracts. The Ministry of Labour wants to put an end to the high temporality of the labour market by changing the temporary contracts from top to bottom. The latest proposal which has been sent to the social partners with whom the department managed by Yolanda Díaz is negotiating with - employers and unions - states that temporary contracts may only have a duration of six months. This is extendable only "exceptionally" and if so, must be established by the sectoral collective agreement, to one year.