Atypical work, unemployment and (no) social protection

Abstract

The Spanish labour market is under constant and profound changes, some of them stem from external factors that are common in most countries (digitisation, climate change, population and labour flows). Other internal, originate from unique cultural and social characteristics inherent in the social practices and in the rules governing them. All these culminated to the emergence of new forms of work, atypical employment, will challenge the adequacy of social protection mechanisms to ensure sufficient resources for these workers during periods of inactivity. In these circumstances, the purpose of this paper is to analyse, on the basis of the Spanish labour market characteristics and these new forms of employment, the unemployment protection system current in Spain for the purpose to find the major drawbacks and current problems to provide social protection to this group of workers. The study shows that there are a variety of state, contributory and welfare benefits that are unable to address this problem, both because of the ever-present exclusion of groups that should take priority attention (youth, persons with disabilities, women, the long-term unemployed, etc.) and because of their resistance to adapt to the reality of the Spanish labour market; and this at a time when States and legal systems should be ready to deal nimbly and equally with the social, economic and employment changes affecting us.