The ban on outsourcing services in the 2023 labor reform
The ban on contracting outsourcing services to meet the needs of workers whose jobs have been covered by collective redundancies and job cuts, as set out in the Decent Work Agenda, was included in Law 13/2023 of April 3, which amends the Labor Code. The system of fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution often reflects a permanent and intrinsic conflict: the realization of some rights most often implies the restriction of other rights, which are also considered essential. In the field of employment, this tension has its own vitality and the conflict with other subjective positions is permanent, particularly with regard to economic realities.
In the relationship between employer and employee, there is no collision of rights, but rather the existence of intrinsic limits to the employer's own freedom to negotiate, thus understanding the primacy of labor law as a set of protective rules. But even if a collision of rights were considered to exist between job security and freedom of economic initiative, Article 338a of the CT is not unconstitutional insofar as it does not place its recipients "in a quantitatively or qualitatively unreasonable situation in the light of the dictates of the protection of individual freedom and autonomy", and the means of ensuring said job security is not "excessive, too serious or unfair".
Author: Filipe Lamelas
