The Government is finalizing the approval of a regulation by which it will oblige companies to detail in their own work contract he base salary and the accessories that a worker will receive when joining a new job. Also the working hours and conditions of the trial period and a hypothetical termination of the contract, among others. The standard also aims to incorporate a series of guarantees to benefit the conciliation of workers at part time -some 2.6 million employed In all of Spain, 73% of them are women.
The transposition of the European directive for some transparent working conditions It is a pending task for the Executive that is almost a year and a half late. From August 2022 It should be incorporated by all member states into their respective legal systems and Spain has not yet complied. The measure is currently being negotiated with parliamentary groups. The forecast that Labor manages is to take this issue to the State official newsletter (BOE) at the beginning of February.
The final document handled by Labor establishes that at the time of starting an employment relationship, the company must make a document available to the new employee, either in the employment contract itself or in an annex, with a series of details. Such as, for example, “the amount of the initial base salary and salary supplements, indicated separately, as well as the frequency and method of payment”, as contained in the latest draft to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access.
Usually these issues already appear in the employment contract, but in an incomplete or indirect manner. For example, it is common for the reference to salary to be “according to agreement”. And then the application that companies make does not always coincide with the expectations generated by the employee. Now Labor wants the management to explain the salary and bonuses with specific figures. Also they schedules or the days available vacationamong others.
The transposition of the transparent working conditions directive has been the subject of negotiation within the social dialogue for months and was scheduled to be included in a royal decree to be approved in the last Minister council of 2023. However, finally the negotiations to define the reform of unemployment benefits – which collapsed in Congress after Podemos’ ‘no’ – or those of the interprofessional minimum wage relegated the transposition of the directive to the background and Currently the department led by Yolanda Díaz is negotiating with the parliamentary groups. Said negotiating process may end up modifying the content of this latest draft.
The philosophy of the directive is based on increasing the information available to the worker, with the aim of reducing the asymmetry with respect to the company. So the contract or annex must also include the details of the trial periods, as well as the work center where the person hired will perform his or her duties or the conditions for termination of the employment relationship. All of this in the employment contract itself, either in an attached document, but it must be clear from the moment the employment relationship begins.
Bias reform
An element that generates some controversy, according to knowledgeable sources, is found in the new features it introduces for employees with a part-time contract.
The Ministry of Labor wants to force companies to give advance notice to said employees with a minimum of three days in advance in the event that they want them to work additional hours, a modification that grants more guarantees to workers and makes their lives easier when it comes to work-life balance, taking into account that the majority of part-time employees are women and that some of them resort to this formula to be able to care for dependent family members. Or also because they cannot access a full-time job – even though they would like to – and end up adding two part-time contracts.
This modification limits the flexibility available to companies when it comes to unplanning their employees’ schedules. The bosses CEOE does not welcome losing internal flexibility.
“The worker must know the day and time of carrying out the agreed additional hours with a minimum notice of three days. In the case of total or partial cancellation by the company of the performance of said hours without observing the previous notice period, the worker will in any case retain the right to the corresponding remuneration,” according to the latest draft.
Currently, labor legislation contemplates the possibility of a part-time employee working more hours than those normally provided for in his or her contract, if both the employee and the company so agree. This is why usually when signing the contract the parties have a weekly working day (for example, 30 hours) and a pool of hours to be distributed throughout the year and designed to respond to more or less foreseeable peaks in activity.
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Now Labor intends to implement a mandatory three-day notice and if the company finally does not require the employee’s services but has not alerted them sufficiently in advance, it must pay them for the hours.
The reform proposed by the department led by Yolanda Díaz also opens the possibility that the part-time employee can unilaterally renounce this bag of complementary hours, as long as some assumptions are met. Such as taking care of family responsibilities, attending training courses whenever their schedule is incompatible with extending the working day or that the worker has another part-time job and extending the working day in one prevents him or her from fulfilling the other.