• The end of the 33 days per year worked: Spain faces severance pay a la carte

  • The Supreme Court paves the way for future 'à la carte' compensation to be lower for the elderly

The

Government

has responded to the

European Committee of Social Rights in Strasbourg,

following a claim by the

UGT

that argued that the compensation for dismissal in Spain is not fair enough, and, to the "

disappointment

" of the union led by

Pepe Álvarez,

it What it has done has been

to defend the current model

of severance pay, without expressly supporting the union's request to modify it.

"

The allegations of the Government of Spain have caused us great disappointment

. We did not expect the Government to make a defense, which we see as clumsy, of maintaining the response system against unfair dismissals that is in force. The Government, in a somewhat contradictory letter, as I think it is the Government itself: it has come to point out that

in Spain there is indeed an adequate response to unfair dismissals

and it tries to limit possible cases of injustice to very specific cases of unjustified dismissals", explained

Fernando Luján,

Deputy Secretary General of Union Policy, after making public the allegations of the Executive and the employer before Strasbourg.

Given the explicit support that the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz,

has given in recent months

to a possible change in compensation for dismissal in the country, within the union they trusted that the Executive would send some allegations to Strasbourg in line with what was expressed by UGT.

However, the Government has not opted for that path and in its response

it is reluctant to possible changes.

When the European Committee asked him for allegations,

the Executive requested an extension of the deadlines

to send a response, which could be an indication that there have been

differences within the Government itself

that have delayed the taking of a position, a process that has resulted in an opinion different from Diaz's.

"They even include a statement that has caused me

astonishment

that says that the increase from 20 days per year worked in dismissals justified for economic, technical, organizational and productive reasons to 33 days is sufficiently dissuasive,

as if that prevented firing any company

", Luján lamented.

UGT has also regretted that the Government has argued that the possible reform of severance pay

was discussed and settled within the framework of the labor reform negotiations

, something that the union believes is "false".

"Frankly, for the government and employers to argue that one of the issues is that this debate was settled in the 2021 reform

is to lie directly

and it is not an argument that has a minimum of solidity," denounced

Pepe Álvarez

, general secretary.

The employers,

CEOE and Cepyme

, also pointed out this issue, in addition to alleging that historically the system has worked like this in Spain and that currently

the worker is exonerated from having to justify the damage.

UGT continues to trust in a favorable resolution

The responses of the Executive and the employers will be taken into account by the

European Committee of Social Rights

, which will now have to study the vision of the three parties and issue a resolution.

Faced with claims from

France and Italy

, this body has shown itself to be favorable to the unions, even though the Executive and the employers of those countries were also reluctant in their allegations, as in the case of Spain.

"In the Italian and French cases, the position of the governments and employers was the same as the Spanish one, and that was not an obstacle for me to agree with them," Luján confided.

In any case,

its resolution does not expressly oblige a legislative change to take place

, so given the Government's response, the change of the system in Spain could now seem further away.

Even so, even if there is no change in legislation, the UGT spokesman recalled that

the courts are already taking into account the European Social Charter in their rulings

, which in practice in some cases authorizes higher severance pay to the appraised

"

The European Social Charter has already begun to be applied.

In January 2023, last month, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia raised compensation to 48 days per year worked, applying it, which is what we ask of general way for all Spaniards, with which the application is immediate.Everyone is clear that the resolutions of the European Committee of Human Rights are applicable and enforceable in Spain, since the social part, which is called the European Committee of Social Rights, must operate in the same way", recalled Luján.

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