Spanish Royal Decree-Law 2009: Employment & Social Inclusion

Royal Decree-Law of 6 March 2009: Urgent Measures for Employment Promotion and Protection of Unemployed Persons (Plan E)

Government measures for the protection of unemployed persons were subdivided into the Spanish Plan for Stimulating the Economy and Employment. Plan E has four strands, designed in 2009, allocating significant amounts of disposable income to support families and companies.

• The plan introduces measures to support job creation, including the Local Investment Fund and the Special Fund for the Revitalization of the Economy and Employment.
• The plan reflects proceedings taken in coordination with the European Union to provide liquidity to the financial system.
• It includes an ambitious agenda of reforms to modernize our economy, improve productivity, and lay the foundations for a change in the productive model.

Article I of the Royal Decree takes measures to encourage temporary employment regulation in lieu of contract termination, subsidizing employers' contributions for common contingencies for social security in certain cases. It also modifies the regulation of the special agreement that Social Security signed within the framework of certain employment records for regulation. On one hand, this avoids the early exit from the labor market of older redundant workers, and on the other hand, it improves the social protection of these workers.

Chapter II contains measures to improve the social protection of workers in general, avoiding periods of vulnerability when receiving unemployment benefits and promoting temporary employment regulation in lieu of contract termination (temporary ERE).

Chapter III sets out measures to promote the employment of unemployed people. In this regard, it stresses the benefits for employers who hire jobseekers. In addition, it lists measures designed to boost permanent part-time contracts, a type of contract widely used in Europe that offers advantages such as stability, reconciliation of work and family life, and a more appropriate work organization.

The Job Market as a Mechanism to Increase Stable Jobs and Combat Social Exclusion

Under the Agreement for Improving Growth and Employment, signed on May 9, 2006, between management, unions, and employers, the need to promote balanced and sustainable economic growth that improves job security was noted as essential. Employment is the key mechanism to achieve effective social integration.

Continued technological advances, the ongoing transformation of the economy and society, systems of work organization, and the related lack of social and family support are creating a high percentage of social exclusion. This affects groups such as:

• Beneficiaries of minimum insertion income or other benefits of a similar nature granted by an autonomous community
• People who cannot access those benefits because they do not meet any of the requirements
• Young people aged 18 and under 30 who come from institutions for the protection of minors
• Persons in rehabilitation for alcoholism or drug abuse
• Prison inmates with the possibility of access to employment, parolees, and former inmates
• Juvenile inmates, former inmates, and parolees

New models of cooperation in this area are job placement firms that have developed numerous initiatives in recent years to promote the inclusion and labor of these people for their subsequent placement in business or self-employment projects.

Occupational Enterprises

These are regulated by Law 44/2007, of December 13. It states that these companies engage in economic activities of producing goods and services and that their objective is the training and socio-labor integration of people experiencing social exclusion as a transition to regular employment. They should offer these people customized and assisted processes in paid work, training in the workplace, and labor and social habituation. They must have services that facilitate the incorporation of these people into the labor market.