Guide to Doing Business in Asturias 2024
The working day will be that agreed upon in the applicable collective bargaining agreements, which will serve as the maximum limit for employment contracts.
The law determines that the maximum duration of the ordinary working day will be forty hours of effective work per week on an annual average. However, under a collective bargaining agreement or by way of an agreement between the company and the legal representatives of the employees, the irregular distribution of working hours may be established throughout the year. In the absence of any agreement, the company may distribute 10% of the working day irregularly throughout the year.
Even though it has not been elaborated upon in this document, it must be taken into account that certain activities, by their very nature, are excluded from the general regime set forth herein, subject to Royal Decree 1561/1995 of 21 September on special working days. To be precise, it pertains to transportation and work at sea; work in rural areas; in mines; urban estate employees, non-railway guards and security guards; commerce and hospitality. Furthermore, said regulation considers some specific aspects owing to the very way in which the provision of services is carried out, such as night work or shift work.
The employment contract will be deemed to have been concluded on a part-time basis when the provision of services has been agreed for a number of hours per day, week, month or year, less than the working day of a comparable full-time worker.
"Comparable full-time worker" means a full-time worker from the same company and workplace, with the same type of employment contract and who performs identical or similar work. If there is no comparable full-time employee in the company, the full working day stated in the applicable collective bargaining agreement shall be assumed or, failing that, the maximum legal working day.
The part-time contract may be concluded for an indefinite period or for a fixed term.
This contract must necessarily be formalised in writing, stating the number of ordinary working hours contracted per day, per week, per month or per year, as well as the method of their distribution as provided for in the collective bargaining agreement.
Part-time workers will have the same rights as full-time workers. When appropriate based on their nature, said rights will be recognised in the legal and regulatory provisions and in the collective bargaining agreements proportionally, depending on the time worked, having to guarantee in any case the absence of discrimination, both direct and indirect, between men and women.
In order to enable voluntary mobility in part-time work, the employer must inform the company's workers about any vacant jobs so that they can make requests for voluntary conversion of a full-time job into a part-time job and vice versa, or for increasing the working time of part-time workers, all in accordance with the procedures established in the collective bargaining agreement.
Workers have the right to at least one and a half days of uninterrupted leave per week, which may be accumulated for periods of up to fourteen days. As a general rule, this leave will include Saturday afternoon, or, where appropriate, Monday morning and the entire day on Sunday. The duration of the weekly leave for those aged under 18 will be, at least, two uninterrupted days.
Between the end of one day and the start of the next, at least twelve hours shall elapse.
The number of ordinary hours of effective work may not exceed nine per day unless in the collective bargaining agreement or, failing that, by agreement between the company and the workers' representatives, another distribution of daily working time has been established.
Bank holidays which will be of a paid, non-recoverable nature may not exceed fourteen per year, two of which will be local. In any case, the following will be respected as national holidays: 25 December, 1st January, 1st May and 12 October.
Workers will have the right to at least thirty calendar days of paid annual leave.
The enjoyment of this period cannot be replaced by financial compensation.
The specific dates of their enjoyment will be set by common agreement between the employer and the worker in accordance with that which is determined in the applicable collective bargaining agreement. In any case, the worker must know the dates of their holidays two months in advance.
The employer must annually prepare a work schedule, which must be displayed in a visible place at the workplace. The following data shall be provided therein:
The employer must implement, after consulting the legal representatives of the workers, a system that allows the working time of each worker to be recorded daily, recording both the specific start time of the provision of services and the end of the working day.
These logs must be kept for four years and they will remain available to workers, their legal representatives and the Employment and Social Security Inspectorate.
Those working hours occurring over and above the maximum duration of the ordinary working day will be regarded as overtime.
Under a collective bargaining agreement, it may be opted between payment of the amount established in the bargaining agreement itself, which may never be less than the ordinary hour, or compensation through paid leave. In the absence of any agreement, it will be assumed that overtime must be compensated by leave within four months following its completion.
The number of overtime hours compensated through remuneration may not exceed 80 hours per year for each worker.
The provision of overtime work will be voluntary, unless its performance has been agreed in a collective bargaining agreement or individual employment contract.
Workers have the right to digital disconnection and the employer must, after consulting the legal representatives of the workers, establish the guidelines and protocols that guarantee the effectiveness of said right.
The applicable collective bargaining agreement will determine the paid leave that workers have the right to enjoy. However, in the absence of regulation, the law establishes paid leave linked to the following circumstances:
In addition to the above, the 8-week parental leave recognised in article 48 bis of the Workers' Statute for the care of children under 8 years of age must be taken into account. However, in this case it is not paid leave but rather grounds for suspension of the contract and so the worker in this situation will not earn a salary.