The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that paid leave must be taken on workdays and not on calendar days, unless regulations provide otherwise. This was confirmed in a ruling this month, which ratifies an earlier ruling of the National Court on bereavement and family care leave, which upheld a lawsuit brought by unions against workers’ collective agreement. Call center.
In a ruling dated 13 November, issued by the USO union and consulted by elDiario.es, the Social Chamber rejected the appeal filed by the employers’ association CEX against the ruling of the National Court of January 2024 that challenged some articles of the sectoral agreement that linked care leave for hospitalization and death of family members to “calendar” days.
Article 37.3 of the Workers’ Basic Law regulates the right of workers to “absent from work, with the right to pay” for various reasons. Among them, it recognizes “five days in the event of an accident, serious illness, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization” for family members and cohabitants, and “days of death of a spouse, de facto partner or relatives up to the second degree of consanguinity or affinity.”
Since the legislation does not specify whether these days are normal or working days, employers have demanded that these days be “normal”, but the Supreme Court rejects this possibility and reiterates its doctrine that vacation days must be working days.
Must start on business days
The Supreme Court said in its ruling that although the Labor Code “suggests nothing about the normal or commercial nature of hospital days or bereavement leave,” the court still maintained that “leave is only conceivable if it is anticipated over a period of time in which there is a work commitment, because otherwise it would not be reasonable for its main effect to be Be absent from work“.
“Therefore, it is natural that the permits refer to working days and this is the interpretation that should be given to the ET (Employers Act).” An interpretation that is also consistent with the European directive regulating these permits.
The ruling includes several unified standards in jurisprudence, including that if the event causing the leave (such as the illness or death of a family member) occurs on a work day, “that is the first day of the leave.”
On the other hand, “when the triggering event occurs on a day other than a business day, the purpose of the declaration requires that it commence on the immediately following business day.”
The judges explain that, given the literal wording of the statute, which refers to “absence from work,” “the first day for the enjoyment of these permits cannot be a holiday, but rather the first working day following the day on which the event occurred that confers the right to the permit.”
The Supreme Court also states that “this is a principle consistent with the ruling of the European Court of Justice of 4 June 2020,” in which the European judges “hold that workers cannot claim it during a period of weekly rest or annual paid leave.”
The USO highlights in a statement that the ruling not only resolves the dispute in this sector, but also reinforces the principle of public scope that applies to all sectors and all collective agreements.