Policy Brief: Bargaining for social rights of precarious workers in Spain

The main focus of the Barsori project was the contribution that social partners make to the reduction of precarious employment through collective bargaining and social dialogue. The project studied experiences in seven EU countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain and the UK. Trade Unions are important co-regulators of the labour market through the collective and other agreements that they conclude as well as through the influence they exert on state policy through social dialogue. As a result they potentially have the possibility to reduce precariousness and segmentation in the labour market. The capacity they have to do so and the effective use they make of this capacity differs between countries and is expected to depend on a number of factors. One concerns the general characteristics of the industrial relations system, in particular the coverage rate of collective agreements, the levels of membership of and power relations between employers and unions, and the importance and impact of social dialogue. The second concerns the standards set by (national and European) labour law and social security legislation and the bargaining space legislation allows for. The third concerns the extent and type of precariousness in the labour market. And the fourth concerns the interests and ideas of the bargaining partners, the extent to which they try to represent the various types of precarious employment, and the experience they have had with bargaining about precarious work, including the availability of successful examples and good practices.