The last straw for a worker is to have been doing the same job for more than 16 years in the same place and with the same colleagues, and to be fired for not having passed the trial period. It seems like a joke, but it is exactly what happened to the employee of a notary office in Madrid. What came next was a judicial battle that reached the Supreme Court, and ended up agreeing.
Although taken to the extreme, this case is no exception. In Spain, companies terminated more than a million contracts in 2025 alleging that the worker had not passed the trial period, and the data suggests that behind many of these dismissals there is something else than employees who did not perform enough.
Sixteen years in the same place. Just like is detailed in the sentence of the Supreme Court, The worker had been working in the same notary office since May 2004, chaining contracts with different notaries who occupied the position throughout that period. In September 2019, the titular notary was assigned to another location and was offered the choice between going with him to Jávea and keeping his contract in force, or collect your compensation for the cessation of its activity. The employee opted for compensation of 10,071.20 euros.
A few months later, the new notary contacted him to enlist his services and that of his former colleagues at the same notary office. In February 2020, he signed a permanent contract with this new notary with a trial period of six months. It should be noted that the new notary was employing the majority of the previous staff, he continued in the same office, with the same furniture, computers and software as all his predecessors.
The pandemic and layoff. With the state of alarm due to COVID-19 newly declared, the worker and two colleagues went to the notary’s office to remind the notary that he must apply the health measures dictated by the authorities: shifts, gel, masks and limiting activity to urgent matters. The notary’s response, recorded literally in the sentence, was that “this is not a cooperative.” That same afternoon, the three received their dismissal letters for not having passed the six-month trial period contemplated in their indefinite contract.
The case took five years to resolve. In December 2023, a first court ruled in favor of the worker: if the new notary had assumed the staff and resources of the previous one, there was a transfer of the company and the agreed trial period was void. There is no point in testing the ability of someone who has been in the same position for 16 years. Finally, and after several appeals before different instances, in January 2026 the Supreme Court confirmed its verdict: the trial period was not valid and sentenced the notary to reinstatement of the employee or compensation of 54,294.42 euros.
One million layoffs a year. This case is striking because of the extreme and obvious nature of the situation, but it is nothing more than an example of an upward trend among companies to avoid compensation for unfair dismissal. According to report data ‘Balance of the labor market in 2025‘ Prepared by the USO union with sources from the SEPE, INE and Social Security, Spanish companies terminated 1.02 million contracts alleging that the worker had not passed the trial period. This represents an increase of 2.34% compared to 2024 and 79% more than in 2021, before the last labor reform in which permanent contracts were reinforced compared to temporary contracts.
What it does especially that data is relevant The thing is that it is not a general increase: it is mainly the indefinite contracts that are behind this growth. Before the labor reform, in 2021, only 13% of all dismissals for not passing the trial period corresponded to permanent contracts. In 2025, that percentage had already risen to 75% of layoffs. To put this figure in a context, dismissals of permanent workers grew by 137% in the same period, while dismissals of permanent workers in a trial period grew by 864%, to exceed 720,000 cases.
“At USO we have always said that it was more than suspicious data. Suddenly, there are many people who are not worth the job for which they are hired. It is clear that the trial period is an escape route to hire people temporarily and not even have to compensate them. But it has been seen that, even so, not only is its use abused, but it is twisted and used illegally,” warns Joaquín Pérez, general secretary of USO.
The gap left by the storms. To understand the reason behind this sudden use of the trial period to argue for dismissal, we must take into account a detail in the regulations that governs severance pay: When an employee does not pass the trial period, the company does not have to pay him any compensation or justify his termination of the contract. On the other hand, for a dismissal, it must be justified and, depending on the case, compensation must be paid. Firing with the excuse of not having passed the trial period is even more profitable for the company than letting it expire. a temporary contractsince in this case a compensation of 12 days per year worked is applied.
Therein lies the trap that the unions They have been denouncing for some time. With the latest labor reform, companies can no longer chain temporary contracts so easily and are forced to hire indefinitely in many more situations. Terminating an indefinite contract during its trial period is cheaper than any other form of dismissal, and hardly requires any paperwork. As and as they pointed from The Economistthis fraud of law would be producing a precariousness of permanent jobs.
The Ministry of Labor launched inspection campaigns in 2024 and 2025, but in January 2026, layoffs for this reason continued to grow by 1.3% compared to the same month of the previous year.
In Xataka | Companies have found a way to fire indefinitely after the labor reform: disciplinary dismissal
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