In Spanish Law a company cannot use a chain of temporary contracts for an indefinite term. This is what it is called a fraud of law since this situation requires a permanent contract. Thus, in these situations where a company uses temporary contracts as fraud of law, the courts consider the employment relationship as a permanent employee considering the initial moment for seniority the date of the first temporary contract.
The problem arises when between two temporary contracts there is a breach of employment, that is, a period of time during which the employee is not hired by the company. Such period of unemployment breaks the so-called “essential unity of the services provided”.
Until now, the Supreme Court used to consider that to not break the “essential unity” mentioned above, the period of unemployment has to be no longer than 20 days. However, this new ruling sets that depending on the length of the fraudulent conduct of the company, if any, the Court has adopted a more relaxed point of view regarding the period of unemployment needed to break the essential unity. In this last case, there were two periods of unemployment with a total length of 148 days.
Therefore, depending on each case, to consider that the period of unemployment has broken the essential unity of the employment relation and, thus, whether the succession of temporary contracts is a fraud of law or not.