Why same «employment act» for elite researchers, long-term unemployed and employees working at home?: precarious (labor) and improvisation (legal)

Abstract

In Spain two problems converge: high legislative improvisation in regulating the different situations of employment and work, and the generalized precariousness of labor relations. This explains an unusual legal fact: the same employment law, which aims to promote the employability of more vulnerable workers, to share, in the same rule of favor of employability, integrates in its scope long-term unemployed, household employees and elite research people. For the former and the latter, RDL 14/2017 temporarily recovers certain employment benefits, which, for various reasons, were in danger of disappearing –in 2018 and December 2018, respectively–. For elite investigators, the legal norm has prevented, in extremis, the loss of their employment. They will now be able to keep their work for a new period of time, but the law does not give them any guarantee of steady persistence. In short, the poor technical quality of the employment laws in Spain accompanies the poor quality of a good part of the jobs created in their job market, also for people of high world qualification.