A N A LY S I S LABOUR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE TRADE UNIONS IN SPAIN Structural Conditions and Current Challenges Holm-Detlev Köhler March 2021 In March 2021 the trade unions in Spain, in a trilateral dialogue with employers’ federations and the government, achieved the first agreement in an EU country on protecting platform workers: delivery staff for companies like Deliveroo, Glovo, Stuart, Amazon and UberEat will in future be clas­sified as employees(not as self-employed). They now have rights such as the right to social security. With the coalition government under the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (January 2020) the dormant social dialogue between the trade unions, the employers’ federations and the government has been revived. Under the auspices of the Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, it has been pos­sible in this context to achieve important outcomes for employees(on short-time work, telework, and equal pay for equal work) in the first 14 months since the government took office. The corona crisis has hit Spain hard. Tra­ditional structural deficits still characterise the Spanish economy despite the slight economic recovery since 2014: the domi­nance of the tourism and property sectors, low productivity, high income disparities, a large low-wage sector with precarious employment conditions, a precarious labour market, deregulated labour relations and weakened trade unions.