Spain to protect rights of home-workers

Employers must provide equipment and agree set hours for out-of-office staff under draft legislation

SPAIN is rushing through a law to protect the rights of staff who work from home.

Remote workers would have the right to a set working day and equal career development opportunities under the draft legislation. The law, which compels companies to pay for homeworking equipment such as computers, was proposed by the labour minister, Yolanda Diaz of Podemos, the Left-wing partner in Spain’s ruling coalition.

It is expected to be approved by the cabinet this month as the pandemic has seen almost one third of the Spanish workforce shun the office.

According to the latest draft, employees must work from home more than one day per week to qualify as remote-workers – a condition imposed by employers’ groups who feared that otherwise staff would simply extend their weekends.

Remote working must also be agreed on by both employer and employee, it states, and a worker can ask to return to the office if their circumstances change. Details on employers’ monitoring their staff and expenses are proving harder to work out, however.

The draft agreement says control of attendance must be done in a way that “does not compromise workers’ dignity”, apparently ruling out the use of webcams, for example. On costs, the original government proposal talked about companies covering “the entirety” of workers’ expenses at home, but it now seems more likely that this issue will be left to collective bargaining agreements within sectors between unions and employers.

“In an economic situation like today, the first reaction of any businessman is going to be to try and save money. But workers shouldn’t have to use their own PCS, for example, because this is unfair and can create a gap between employees with better or worse equipment,” said David, a 45-year-old employee at a Madrid marketing firm who preferred not to use his surname.

“There is very little culture of remote working in Spain. Up to now, companies and employees have believed there is a connection between face time and productivity,” said David, who is currently only going to his company’s office every other day.

“This has to be regulated properly, because with the levels of unemployment in Spain today, employers have all the power on their side.”

Unemployment currently stands at more than 15 per cent in Spain, with 3.4 million jobs having been maintained since the start of the pandemic through a government-funded furlough scheme.

Spain’s health ministry announced 26,560 new cases of Covid-19 detected between Friday and Sunday, taking the total number since the pandemic began to more than 500,000.

There is some fear that remote working will be more attractive to women, and that this situation may worsen the glass ceiling that has led to a 22 per cent gap between average male and female salaries in Spain.