• Labor Weekly shifts and temperature controls: this is the operation return to the office in September

The evidence that telecommuting applied in a generalized way in the last six months can last at least until the end of the year to avoid epidemiological risks adds more pressure to the negotiations that the Government maintains with unions and companies to regulate this activity.

The Ministry of Labor asks its interlocutors to move forward in the Council of Ministers a bill that is then processed in Congress. Since its original proposal, Minister Yolanda Díaz has notably lowered the new labor framework , which establishes financial compensation for home expenses of employees, an inventory of work tools provided by the company and some flexibility in schedules. With an important nuance introduced at the request of businessmen and with a view to overcoming the approval of the Ministry of Economy : the conditions to establish how to telework have to be negotiated within each company.

With all the urgency that unions and workers want to introduce to the negotiations, the text still has obstacles to overcome if it wants to have the support of all parties, which is what Díaz has achieved so far in all the social agreements reached until now. the date , from the minimum interprofessional salary in January to the employment regulation files and its extension.

Among those points stands out how much time worked from outside the office will turn an employee into a teleworker. This is a difficult question because getting it done has consequences. The last approach expressed by Work on August 3 establishes that limit from 20% of the day . That is to say, all employees who in their jobs move at least one day away from the office, for example, on a Friday as allowed by many companies, would be considered teleworkers in light of the Government's draft bill.

The consequence of assuming this category would be that automatically and according to the law, companies should provide remote work teams to these professionals , in addition to negotiating with them the entire chapter of news that the law includes, from compensation of expenses to schedules .

For employers, it is too low a limit that they are not willing to accept, with which either the limit is increased or Labor will not have a consensus proposal to forward to the Council of Ministers and, later, to Congress. Regarding the negotiation, it is relevant that for its resumption next September the health crisis seems to be far from having disappeared. There are several regional authorities that are already planning measures to escalate the alert from tomorrow and large companies have transferred their employees that the return to the offices will be carried out in shifts of 50% of the workforce . If an exception is not contemplated, although the new labor framework takes months to be processed, with the Labor proposal all employees of these companies would become teleworkers.

"The limit is important," explains an interlocutor on the business side of the negotiating table. "But deep down," he continues, "what worries companies is that the new framework proposed by Diaz reduces their ability to organize work in their companies to align it with the demands that the business poses at all times."

The negotiation to definitively specify the conditions of remote work will coincide with the one that started a few weeks before to approve an extension of the schemes that currently support the income of workers affected by ERTE, those who have lost the right to unemployment benefits and exemptions from payment of contributions to companies that have requested these measures. Although over the last two months the number of workers has fallen from the peak of 3.2 million it reached in April, the escalation of measures that administrations are preparing could lead to a new rebound in ERTE due to force majeure. in august . If Minister Díaz maintains her agenda, the talks on these two issues could also coincide with another aimed at raising the "most damaging" issues of the labor reform.

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Know more

  • Yolanda Diaz
  • Unemployment

Labor The Government requires Díaz to wait for an agreement with the employers before processing his teleworking bill

Labor Force Survey Job destruction caused by coronavirus and economic hibernation beats all records

Recovery from the crisis The governor of the Bank of Spain supports the extension of the ERTE but asks Díaz not to repeal the labor reform

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