Eurofound's EU PolicyWatch collates information on the responses of government and social partners to the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, as well as gathering examples of company practices aimed at mitigating the social and economic impacts.
Factsheet for measure ES-1980-11/2462 – Updated – measures in Spain
Country | Spain , applies nationwide |
Time period | Open ended, started on 14 March 1980 |
Context | COVID-19, Restructuring Support Instruments |
Type | Legislations or other statutory regulations |
Category |
Employment protection and retention
– Income support for people in employment (e.g., short-time work) |
Author | Jessica Durán (IKEI) and Eurofound |
Measure added | 23 June 2022 (updated 03 November 2022) |
The Workers' Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores, ET) is the main Spanish law regulating the labour market, and therefore regulates temporary lay-off plans. This law, initially approved on 14 March 1980, has undergone several modifications, and currently the law in force is the Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015, of 23 October, which approves the revised text of the Workers' Statute Law.
A temporary layoff plan is a special administrative labour procedure which can be executed due to failure of the business activity as a result of economic, technical, organisational or production problems. Since Royal Decree law 10/2010 was approved, it can be implemented irrespectively of the number of workers affected. Law 3/2012 eliminated the requirement of administrative authorisation.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, all workers, including those in cooperative companies, affected by temporary collective dismissals or reduced working time schemes have the right to receive unemployment benefits, even if they do not meet the minimum contribution period required for it.
A special mechanism also covers domestic workers (people who are registered in the Special System of Home Employees of the General Social Security Regime, before the entry into force of Royal Decree 463/2020).
This instrument is related to the following cases:
A temporary layoff plan is a special administrative labour procedure that allows companies to temporarily dismiss workers or to reduce the working time. As far as the consequences of the measure are concerned, in temporary layoff cases the workers are entitled to unemployment benefits, while the enterprise must continue paying social security contributions. In the case of working time reduction, workers are entitled to partial unemployment benefits. In those cases, working time can be reduced between 10% and 70%. Once the measure is over, workers return to their jobs according to their previous contractual conditions.
Since law 3/2012 was approved, the procedure can be implemented irrespectively of the number of workers affected. That law also eliminated the requirement of administrative authorisation. Once all the relevant information has been reported, a consultation process is opened. The consultation process with the employee representatives will not be longer than 30 days (or 15 in enterprise employing fewer than 50 employees). This fulfils the request of the Spanish legislation to 'exercise in good time' the consultation process. Consultation implies meetings for deliberation where the company management and the workers' legal representatives discuss the reasons for the redundancies, the possibility of avoiding or reducing the number of redundancies and the possible measures aiming to mitigate the consequences over the affected workers and to permit the continuity and viability of the enterprise project. In the absence of workers’ legal representatives, employees are able to confer representation on a commission made up of a maximum of three members of the most representative trade unions of the sector.
The process works as follows. First, the employer notifies to the public employment services the initiation of the layoff process. This allows the public employment service to begin a procedure to ensure compliance with all legal requirements established. Then, the employer must notify the employee representative in writing about the opening of the consultation process. The notification must contain the following information: number and professional categories of the workers affected by the redundancy; number and professional categories of the workers normally employed during the last year; justification of the measure according to the concurrence of economic, technical, organisational or productive causes; nominative relationship of workers affected; and information about the composition of the employees’ representative commission (Art. 8, Royal decree 801/2011 of 10 June).
Simplified procedure
On 27 March 2020, as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, the government has simplified the administrative procedures whereby companies implementing a temporary collective dismissal ask the unemployment benefit for their employees, so that the workers will receive their payment benefit faster. This simplified procedure for temporary layoff was initially planned to be implemented until the end of the state of alarm to maintain confinement measures.
For cases in which the company decides to suspend contracts or temporarily reduce the working day, the following process will be followed:
For cooperative companies, when due to lack of adequate or sufficient means the general assembly of the cooperative cannot be called to hold it through virtual means, the company's governing council will assume the authority to approve the total or partial suspension of the provision of work for its members and partners and will issue the corresponding certification for processing, under the terms provided in articles 22 and 23 of Royal Decree-Law 8/2020 of 17 March, of extraordinary urgent measures to face the economic and social impact of COVID-19.
Entitlement to benefit
All workers affected by temporary collective dismissals or reduced working time schemes will have the right to receive unemployment benefits even if they do not meet the minimum contribution period required for it. Moreover, for future unemployment spells, the period in which the worker received unemployment benefits under temporary collective dismissals or reduced working time schemes motivated by COVID-19 will not be considered as consumed ('counter to zero' policy). The objective of this measure is to make sure that all workers under these procedures will receive income support.
In all cases it is required that the contract has been signed prior to the date of entry into force of this royal decree-law. The measures provided for in this regulation shall be applicable to the affected workers if, at the time of the adoption of the temporary collective dismissal or reduced working time procedure, they had a previous right to unemployment benefit or subsidy suspended and/or if they lacked the minimum period of listed employment to cause right to contributory benefit, or had not received previous unemployment benefit.
Right to flexible working time and reduction of working hours
This measure allows workers to adapt or reduce their workday to care for their dependants, with a 100% reduction in the workday being possible. The objective is to facilitate those people with care responsibilities of disabled, elderly or child dependants, to adapt their working time and eventually reduce it in order to be able to guarantee the care tasks. This policy was included in Royal Decree 8/2020 of 17 March. Eligible employees should make contact with their company to get the application of the regulations contained in the labour code in relation to reduction of working time.
The following updates to this measure have been made after it came into effect.
28 December 2021 |
The COVID-19 simplified procedure was initially extended by social partners in agreement with the Ministry of Work until September 2020. In September, the government and the social partners have agreed an extension of the measure until 31 January 2021. The measure was extended again, until the end of February 2022, when this COVID-specific mechanism disappeared. Thus, the ERTEs of limitation and prevention of activity due to the pandemic were governed by the ERTE COVID regulations until 28 February 2022. ( Real Decreto-ley 32/2021, de 28 de diciembre, de medidas urgentes para la reforma laboral, la garantía de la estabilidad en el empleo y la transformación del mercado de trabajo, 2020 ). |
From the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, the number of workers affected by temporary dismissals dramatically increased. Afterwards, the recovery of employment implied a decrease in the use of these measures until 2017. At a later stage, the number of workers benefitting of this instrument restarted to raise.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Work and Social Economy, the number of workers affected by temporary dismissal was 300,713 in 2012, 234,116 in 2013, 92,234 in 2014, 62,298 in 2015, 53,658 in 2016, 28,257 in 2017, 44,954 in 2018 and 50,033 in 2019 ( Ministry of Work and Social Economy 2020 ).
The health crisis caused by COVID-19 triggered new situations of need linked to the lack of employment and aggravated the situation in which previously unemployed people found themselves. 3,386,000 workers were affected by temporary dismissal until May 2020. Nevertheless, by October 2020, numbers decreased by 80%, and around 700,000 workers remained under this ERTE scheme. The year 2020 closed with 755,613 people protected by ERTE. ( La Moncloa, 2020 ).
Strengths: This measure reduces the number of job losses and permits employers to adjust their production to the recession ( Felgueroso, De la Fuente & Jansen 2020 ). The experience of the health and economic crisis derived from COVID-19 has shown the importance and effectiveness of the use of temporary lay-offs as a mechanism of internal flexibility of companies for the temporary adjustment of their activity, in order to avoid the destruction of employment characteristic of previous crises. The result has been very positive in terms of decoupling the evolution of GDP from that of employment.( Real Decreto-ley 32/2021, de 28 de diciembre, de medidas urgentes para la reforma laboral, la garantía de la estabilidad en el empleo y la transformación del mercado de trabajo, 2020 )
Workers | Businesses | Citizens |
---|---|---|
Employees in standard employment
|
Applies to all businesses | Does not apply to citizens |
Actors | Funding |
---|---|
National government
Trade unions Employers' organisations Public employment service |
Employer
National funds |
Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:
Trade unions | Employers' organisations | |
---|---|---|
Role | Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative | Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative |
Form | Consultation through tripartite or bipartite social dialogue bodies | Consultation through tripartite or bipartite social dialogue bodies |
Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:
Under the new regulation, temporary layoff does not need to be authorised by the labour authority. Thus, the power of the companies to apply for the measure has been increased. Social dialogue has been fundamental in the design of this new regulation during the crisis. Indeed, most of the Royal Decree 8/2020 (regulating the simplified procedure of temporary layoff plans) resulted of previous agreements of social partners (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), Sindicato Unión General de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de España (UGT), Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales (CEOE) and Confederación Española de la Pequeña y Mediana Empresa (CEPYME)) ( La Razón 2020 ).
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Citation
Eurofound (2022), Temporary layoff plan, measure ES-1980-11/2462 (measures in Spain), EU PolicyWatch, Dublin, https://static.eurofound.europa.eu/covid19db/cases/ES-1980-11_2462.html
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