La desregulación política del mercado de trabajo en España (1984-1997): un programa de investigación.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to raise a research program about the process of labour market deregulation in Spain during the period 1984-1997. Throughout these years, three important labour reforms were implemented, what produced a deep flexibilization of labour market institutional regulation. The outcome of this process has been the expansion of temporary or precarious employment, a phenomenon called the “employment crisis” by some authors. The goal of such a program research is to report this process of labour market deregulation and to explain the factors which caused it, paying special attention to the political dimension of both labour market and its institutional reform. To accomplish this task, we use the “contested exchange” model, which explores the power relation between workers and capitalists, and the “power resources theory”, which allows us to link the former to macro level policies, along with four complementary hypotheses.