Spain’s official gazette (BOE) published Royal Decree-Law 6/2019 on 7 March 2019: leave for the other parent rises to eight weeks from 1 April, equality plans are required from 50 workers and a salary register arrives.
Spain’s official gazette, the BOE, published Royal Decree-Law 6/2019 of 1 March, on urgent measures to guarantee equal treatment and opportunities between women and men in employment and occupation, on 7 March 2019. It enters into force on 8 March, except the reform of birth leave, which applies from 1 April. Like any royal decree-law, it must be ratified by Congress within thirty days.
The new birth leave
The new article 48.4 of the Workers’ Statute provides that childbirth suspends the employment contract for 16 weeks, for both the birth mother and the other parent, with six mandatory, uninterrupted weeks immediately after the birth, taken full time. For the other parent the change is gradual: eight weeks in 2019, the first two mandatory; twelve from 1 January 2020, four of them mandatory; and sixteen from 1 January 2021, six of them mandatory. During the transition, the birth mother may transfer to the other parent up to four weeks of her non-mandatory period in 2019 and two in 2020.
Leave is an individual right of each parent. After the mandatory weeks, the rest can be taken in weekly periods, accumulated or interrupted, until the child is twelve months old, giving the company at least fifteen days’ notice. The Social Security benefit equals 100% of the regulatory base. The right to request adjustments to working hours and to the way of working, including remote work, is also strengthened until children are twelve: if the collective agreement does not regulate it, the company must open a negotiation of up to thirty days and reply in writing, accepting, proposing an alternative or refusing with objective reasons.
Equality plans and the salary register
Equality plans, until now compulsory only for companies with more than 250 workers, will be required from 50. The plan must be preceded by a diagnosis, negotiated with workers’ representatives, covering nine areas: recruitment and selection, job classification, training, promotion, working conditions (including the pay audit), shared responsibility, under-representation of women, pay, and prevention of sexual and sex-based harassment. A Register of Equality Plans is also created, in which companies must file their plans; its regulatory development is pending, and the government has six months to issue the necessary rules.
The timetable is gradual. Companies with more than 150 and up to 250 workers have one year to approve the plan; those with more than 100 and up to 150, two years; and those with 50 to 100, three years, counted from publication of the royal decree-law, that is, until March 2020, 2021 and 2022. Failing to meet the obligations on equality plans and measures is a serious breach under the law on social-order infringements and penalties.
The salary register, by contrast, applies to all companies from 8 March: they must keep a register of the average values of salaries, supplements and non-salary payments of their workforce, broken down by sex and by professional groups, categories or jobs of equal value. Workers can access it through their legal representatives. In companies with at least 50 workers, if the average pay of one sex is 25% or more higher than that of the other, the company must justify in the register that the difference is due to reasons unrelated to sex.
What companies should prepare
It is best to start with the data: have the workforce organised by groups and categories, with average pay by sex, and check which deadline band applies to the company for its equality plan. If it has to draw one up, it must set up the negotiating committee with workers’ representatives and prepare the diagnosis of the nine areas. It should also plan for absences due to childbirth, especially in small workforces, and review how requests for working-hours adjustments are handled, with the thirty-day period and the written reply.
It is also useful to check what the applicable collective agreement says, since it may improve on these rules, and to reflect the changes in internal policies. Ask your employment adviser how this applies to your situation.
Equality moves from recommendation to obligation with a deadline: the first step is to sort out the payroll data.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
