(Cinco Días, Carlos Molina, May 27, 2026)
Spanish tourism has recorded strong employment growth with 386,000 net jobs created between the first quarter of 2023 and 2026, thanks mainly to the labor reform that caused permanent contracts to explode by 23% and reduced temporary ones, but led to a sharp increase in part-time contracts which today represent 25.5% of permanent contracts in the sector, often used as a tool to maintain flexibility and precariousness.
Unions denounce that companies exploit part-time and fixed discontinuous contracts to organize short shifts and disguised on-call work, hitting especially women, young people, and immigrants, while the kellys, the floor housekeepers, complain of abuses such as terminations on the 44th day of the extended probation period and precarious housing conditions despite wage improvements.
Trade associations such as Hostelería de España defend part-time work as a useful tool to reconcile work and private life and to bring young people into the market, but unions respond that this model increases structural precariousness and workload without solving the sector’s underlying problems.
Growth of part-time contracts
“Among the 2.14 million contributors with permanent contracts in tourism, 547,449 were part-time, which means a 38% increase in four years, a historical series high in absolute terms.”
Effect of the reform on tourism
“The labor reform had a direct impact on the tourism temporality rate, dropping from 28.2% in the first quarter of 2022 to 13.7% in the first quarter of 2026.”
Union criticism of part-time work
“Companies are exploiting part-time work to organize staff in increasingly ephemeral shift systems, establishing what is becoming a disguised on-demand work model.”
Problems of the kellys
“Now everyone is fixed discontinuous and the probation period has been extended from 15 to 45 days. This has caused many companies to opt to terminate the contract on day 44 arguing that the probation period was not passed.”
Defense of flexibility
“The annual workday with irregular distribution in the agreements allows adapting schedules to the rhythm of high or low seasons, while part-time positions in full employment conditions are a very important path for young people.”
(Excerpt from the newsletter by Giuseppe Liturri)
