Law 20/2021 and stabilization public companies, public business entities, public sector foundations and public sector consortia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the stabilization of the personnel of public companies, public business entities, public sector foundations and public sector consortia, based on the seventh additional disposition of Law 20/2021, on urgent measures for the reduction of temporality in public employment. The opportunity of the study lies in the high number of entities and workers potentially affected and the doubts raised by its application to these entities. Based on the jurisprudential extension of the principles of access to public employment to these entities, the study defends that a worker hired as «indefinite», without following the aforementioned principles, should be classified as non-permanent workers of indefinite duration and, therefore, along with the rest of temporary and indefinite non-permanent workers –declared or not–, must undergo the stabilization process described in the aforementioned law. The study of the circumstances that no longer motivate the condition of indefinite non-permanent worker (such as cases of resumption ex art. 44 of the Workers’ Statute), as well as the concept of this controversial figure also focuses part of the analysis. And in the second case, specially, because the existence of several preliminary rulings questioning this jurisprudential solution to temporary abuse might condition the stabilization processes underway. The work also analyses the impact of 2021 legal amendments on the Basic Statute of the Public Employee and the Workers’ Statute and if the stabilization rules fixed by Law 20/2021 should be adapted in the case of these public corporations.