The obligation of every employee to file every day and record how long you work four years and more than half of the companies still fails the cotton test of the Work inspection. Systems that stop counting when a worker exceeds their theoretical limit of hoursbosses who falsify the schedules or companies that directly lack any type of mechanism, even if it is to appear, are some of the frauds most common in which defaulting corporations incur.
The registration of working hours was a norm that was approved in 2019 the first government of Pedro Sanchezwith the minister Magdalena Valerio in front of the portfolio of Work. The will of the same was to enable an effective control mechanism of the hours worked and equate the Spanish labor framework to the European one, where said obligation has been common for years. In order to rationalize working times, avoid abuse with the extra hours (especially unpaid) and guarantee that workers complied with the perceptive breaks between shifts.
Four years later, the regulations leave a bittersweet balance. In Spain they work a 8% more of overtime each month -a total of 24.4 million- and practically half are not paid. At the same time, the number of employed people who take more than 50 hours each week -the ordinary working day is 40- has decreased slightly: in 2019 they represented 8% of the employed and today they are 7%, according to the latest data from the INE active population survey.
Labor inspectors appreciate that this regulation has given them a boost when it comes to proving abuses of working hours, although the majority unions acknowledge that it is not being enough to short-cut companies that impose -directly or indirectly- working hours. more to your templates.
One in two companies does not pass an Inspection
Since registering the hours of their employees is an obligation for companies -May 2019-, the Labor Inspectorate has carried out a total of 7,900 performances to verify correct compliance with the standard. Among these it has detected 4,232 violations, that is, more than half of the companies do not pass an inspection. In fines he has collected a total of €6.1 millionwhich places the average penalty ticket at €1,440according to data provided by the autonomous body to questions from EL PERIÓDICO.
One of the criticisms of the rule is that the cost of the fine does not have a deterrent effect. Not having a record of the working day has a cost of between 751 and 7,500 eurosregardless of what the company invoices or how many employees it has on staff.
However, the obligation to keep a record of working hours allows inspectors to expose other frauds that do imply greater punishment. As an example, only in 2022 did the ‘labor police’ detect 11,070 violations in time matters, such as working more hours than normal, undeclared hours or lack of breaks, among others. Which earned the infringing companies a total of €13.7 million in fines.
Special care must be taken with the absence of registration by companies with employees part time. According to inspectors consulted, a lack that is usually found are companies that have a person hired for 20 hours a week and actually spends 40 hours. In this sense, those corporations that do not register the hours of their workers with a part-time contract must pay them the day as if it were full, according to a recent ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia (TSJG). This implies paying wages to workers and Social Security for a period of time that can be up to four years.
How should the record of the day be?
The jurisprudence has made it clear that any registration system must meet two basic requirements: It must be “aim” and “reliable”. And each company has been materializing these requirements in its own way. The most common among large companies is to use a computer application through which each worker records when entering and records when leaving, managing breaks to eat or smoke in a different way, which jurisprudence has established are not effective working time. Here companies like Factorial, intratime, woffu either bizneo have done business providing these solutions to the legal obligation.
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Other companies, such as Zurich Seguros, opted for a working day registration system associated with the use of certain work tools, such as computers. The moment the employee turned on his computer, the counter started running and the moment he turned it off, he shut down. The system deducted two hours from the total calculation, according to the hour and a half of the meal and another half hour for the breakfast.
Although among small companies, especially in sectors such as hospitality or commerce, the most common method is a sheet of paper, on which the worker must stipulate the time of entry and exit each day and sign. Here a recurring trap is that the employee limits himself to signing and the boss fills in the rest.