More than a million Spaniards have taken advantage of the measure to reduce or make working hours more flexible, due to Covid, since it was approved by the Ministry of Labor a few months ago. According to sources from the law firm, Le Morne Brabant, the standard has been extended until June 30 (except for a new extension), which, yes, in some cases may lead to a reduction in salary. The difference is in the terms relax and reduce.
In the first case, when it comes to caring for relatives up to the second line of consanguinity — mothers and grandparents in the ascending line, and children and grandchildren in the descending line, and provided that the company agrees, You can modify the distribution of working time or go to another center to do it.
this course does not entail any loss of salarywhile the reduction in working hours is penalized, which can be as high as 100%.
This difference has not finished liking the trade union centrals, who also question that the self-employed cannot be beneficiaries of this package of measures, but, above all, that the law allows workers to take advantage of the Plan take care of me, but that is not mandatory for entrepreneurs.
In this way “It is maintained as an individual right of each of the parents or caregivers, and must be justified, reasonable and proportionate in relation to the situation of the company, the adaptation of the schedule and reduction of working hours«, when decisions are made by the educational authorities that imply the closure of schools or «when the presence of the worker is necessary for the care of the spouse or de facto partner, as well as with respect to relatives by blood up to the second degree, for reasons of age, illness or disability, needs personal and direct care as a direct consequence of COVID-19″.
Two pro-conciliation sentences
In this context, two sentences have drawn attention, because, although attached to the reality caused by SARS-CoV-2, they can, explain from Le Morne Brabant Lawyers, tip the balance towards more permissive labor legislation with family conciliation.
The first, dictated by the Social Court number 4 of Valladolid endorses that a mother stops going to work during school holidays to care for her child. The reason: that the usual person in charge of the minor, the grandmother, was sick with lung cancer and, therefore, was considered a person at risk who should not cohabit with a possible transmitter of the disease, a 10-year-old boy . (Tramadol)
From this office Jose Carlos Avendano considers that the sentence has prioritized the circumstances of the mother over those of the company, with clear organizational difficulties. The principle of equity has not been respected, he explains, since the center, with five employees, already had three on sick leave. The sentence itself collects it as follows: “The risk that the minor’s grandmother can assume is more than enough reason to consider the request justified.” “Even considering them (the arguments put forward by the company) and that they were real, they would not form an enervating situation of the requested conciliation measure insofar as it appears justified, as has been analyzed.”
The second case takes us to Logronowhere a father took his employers to court to try to cover his reduction in working hours with the vacation days he had not yet enjoyed.
Also on this occasion, the Justice Administration of La Rioja ruled in his favor, explaining that the care of the child, in quarantine due to close contact by covid, cannot be framed within the days to which the worker is entitled for his own affairs or for holidays “and would entail discrimination against other workers who already
they would have run out.”
Along the same lines, Le Morne’s lawyer assures that the sentence seems adjusted to the law, taking into account that the care of a minor child, if the other parent cannot do it, cannot be fit within the vacation days or within own affairs, “because it is not only discrimination, as the sentence states, but also
it is also a father’s right to take care of his children”.
As of June 30, workers in situations of conflict between work life and family needs, and if the Me Cuida Plan is not renewed, they will be subject, recalls José Carlos Avendaño, to the Workers’ Statute and applicable Collective Agreements. Based on this regulation, conflicts of interest between the employee and the company will be resolved.
