Dismissal. Labour nature of the social partnership contract

The Supreme Court establishes that the relationship of someone who provides social collaboration services for the Administration cannot be classified as an employment relationship.

The High Court upheld the cassation appeal for the unification of doctrine brought by the defendant public administrations against an upheld judgment of the Social Division of the Supreme Court of the Canary Islands on dismissal.

The Supreme Court ruled on social collaboration contracts: 

a) Social collaboration cannot be converted into an indefinite-term contract, because unemployment benefit is not temporary in nature.

b) Social collaboration contracts do not generate an ordinary employment relationship, as they have to be provided for a public administration, by a person who is receiving unemployment benefit and who is paid in a special way, as the remuneration consists of a supplement to the benefit that is usually received. 

c) The very denomination of temporary collaboration work prevents being definitively bound by it.

d) There is no fraud of law when the link between the parties is made using a regulation that expressly authorises and protects it. 

e) The transformation of workers who provide temporary collaboration services into permanent employees would determine the opening of a fraudulent gateway for entry into the Administration's staff, the circumvention of the regulatory tests and cause prejudice to potential applicants, and is therefore contrary to articles 14 and 103 of the Constitution.

Source. G.Elias y Muñoz Abogados. Labour Law Department