El derecho social en el umbral del siglo XXI: la nueva fase del derecho del trabajo

Abstract

"As a result of the crisis of the so called "wage society" the working social statute is suffering deep disorganization processes. On the one hand there is a weakening of the protective mechanisms of workers in the framework of working relationships. On the other hand public social protection is no longer having the task of an equalling and levelling instrument and its protective intensity is reduced. This causes a change from the social welfare to the social security state. The globalization process reinforces the tendency towards the increase in equality and the decrease of social guarantees. In the Europen Community the political groupings are registered in the same process of deregulation and adjustment of the working market and of the decrease of the part social politics play. The regulation contained in the Amsterdam Treaty are still not good enough for the effective guarantee of basic social rights. Furthermore the grouping criteria still fail to incorporate "social quality". The recent reforms of the rights to work and the social security in Spain have followed the same tendencies. The elements for an alternative strategy should be based on the idea that human work is not a merchandise. These elements should be: the public sector should play an important part, the idea that different social policies can live together and to support an expansive and not residuary social welfare, to reinforce industrial democracy and a type of company which is shared and pluralistic, to stimulate a policy of offensive adjustment and to carry out a full employment policy through an adecuate judicial organization of the working time.