Employmentweb_low

labour Markets and welfare states: a country perspective
temporary/fixed term contracts, training contracts and redundancy
procedures, which established the foundations for a revised
regulation of the collective bargaining system. some of the major
aspects of this reform included a lifting of the public monopoly on
job placement, allowing the operation of private employment
agencies and temporary employment agencies, and the reduction of
the costs of individual dismissal, through a restriction of the cases in
which back pay awards after dismissal appeal hearings are to be
paid by employers. under these conditions, often previously illegal
situations hurting workers were made legal, and there was a
progressive segmentation of the labour force, with a core of
permanent workers and a group of precarious workers with greater
employment insecurity (Benach et al., 2007).
Work-related health problems in spain imply an enormous
health and economic cost to workers and their families, companies
and society as a whole (Benavides, 2007). The high level of
occupational injuries, for example, reflects important deficiencies in
the prevention systems that a developed country should not have.
norms and regulations for the prevention of occupational hazards
have been only partially applied, occupational health interventions
have not been suitable and budgets were limited. moreover, many
interventions targeting traditional occupational hazards were
designed to be implemented for permanent job holders working for
medium-to-large-size firms, and are unlikely to meet the demands
of the new flexible work environment.
although research on work-related inequalities in health is still
limited, a notable increase in the number of studies has been achieved
since the 90s. The spanish Black report (1996) extensively reviewed
class, gender and geographical inequalities in spain, documenting large
and consistent health inequalities (navarro & Benach, 1996), and the
first study on occupational health inequalities was published as part of
the first Catalonian Black report (artazcoz, Cortès, Benach, &
Benavides, 2003). research shows that there are considerable
differences with regard to exposures to damaging working conditions,
occupational hazards and health outcomes between social classes,
genders, and types of contracts. for example, physical risks,
musculoskeletal problems, and psychosocial factors such as job control
show much worse indicators among manual workers and women
(Benach et al., 2007). prevalence rates for all occupational risk factors
are higher among temporary workers. for example, having control over
job breaks rates are 26.5 per cent and 39 per cent for permanent and
temporary workers, respectively. Working class women have less access
to employment, are more often unemployed, and they have high family
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