Who pays for the work absenteeism caused by the commuter rail system?
The government is promoting teleworking, while unions are demanding that the cost not fall on the workers.
BarcelonaThe Catalan government agreed on Monday to activate the teleworking decree to minimize mobility and reinforce all intercity bus lines during the day due to disruptions on the commuter rail network in Catalonia. The measures were agreed upon at a new government monitoring meeting, coinciding with Two new network outages this morning due to IT issues. But many workers, once again, have been unable to get to work or have arrived late. Who pays the price?
Social partners met at the Palau de la Generalitat with the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, and the Minister of Business and Labor, Miquel Sàmper, to analyze the situation. Two clear demands: that there be a clear and reliable information channel to keep the public informed of the situation. And, from the unions, that the cost of absences from work not be borne by the workers.
The Catalan government has stated that it continues to follow the railway situation in Catalonia "with concern." The Government has expressed that it "maintains constant contact with the country's economic and social stakeholders to share and update the situation of the commuter rail network and the resulting consequences."
The situation is causing concern among Catalan economic sectors. Thus, the "Move for Barcelona" Roundtable, which brings together the city's main business associations and economic sectors, has warned that the Catalan government's recommendation to prioritize teleworking due to the current state of the commuter rail service is "not viable" for many sectors such as healthcare, education, commerce, construction, restaurants, and services. Therefore, it has called for an emergency strategy to guarantee the safety of all users' journeys and the immediate restoration of normal business productivity. In a statement, the roundtable warns that the "unprecedented" rail crisis the country is experiencing is preventing more than 400,000 users a day from fulfilling their work obligations.
"The Government must understand that halting commuter rail services is tantamount to halting the country, with the serious social, health, and economic repercussions this entails," they stated. Therefore, they insisted on the need for a "stable and sustained" emergency plan that ensures efficient travel, preserves normal production, and guarantees the safety of users, with the goal of restoring normalcy "as quickly as possible." In parallel, the Roundtable urged the Government to prioritize commuter rail over other projects and allocate more investment to everyday mobility than to large, symbolic infrastructure projects. For their part, representatives from the CCOO and UGT unions demanded "clear and precise instructions" from the Government to prevent workers from bearing the brunt of the commuter rail crisis. Speaking to the media after meeting with councilors Dalmau and Sàmper, the general secretary of the CCOO union, Belén López, called for a single channel for reporting on the mobility situation. The leader of the UGT union, Camil Ros, asked for "flexibility" so that workers are not negatively impacted by the rail chaos. The president of Pimec, Antoni Cañete, stated that the Catalan government is "not guilty" but is "responsible" for the crisis. Cañete called for "all possible flexibility" to minimize the effects of the commuter rail chaos, through teleworking or "other solutions." For his part, the Vice President of Public Works, Lluís Moreno, did not comment after the meeting, but in a message later sent to the press, he warned that the chaos in the commuter rail network could affect Catalonia's GDP forecasts for 2026, and urged governments to invest so that public infrastructure functions "correctly." Meanwhile, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce issued a statement demanding a "clear and immediate" solution from the Ministry of Transport to the "unprecedented crisis" in the commuter rail network, which is the result of "decades of accumulated deficits." The Chamber asserts that it does not consider it "acceptable" that "halfway through" the implementation of the Commuter Rail Plan, "we continue to have such an unrobust and unresilient network." In the statement, the organization denounced "the evident lack of investment" in the network by the Catalan government.
Legal questions
The issue that raises the most questions among workers and employers is what legal coverage exists in cases of infrastructure collapse. The problem is that the existing regulations are national, not regional, so the Catalan government (Generalitat) has little say, beyond cases of climate alerts. Firstly, the teleworking law passed by Congress during the pandemic stipulates that the company and the workers "must reach an agreement" to decide whether or not the latter can work from home, explains Jordi Garcia, professor of labor law at the University of Barcelona. This means that teleworking is not an employee right, but neither is it a situation that a company can impose on them. Similarly, "there is no regulation by which an administration can mandate teleworking," Garcia points out. This means that the Generalitat's recommendations have "no legal value," he adds. However, with the severe weather event that affected the Valencian Community in 2024, the legislation was modified to include the possibility of "leave due to weather incidents," which would allow workers to avoid physically attending work in the event of adverse weather conditions. According to García, this regulation allows for two interpretations: one is that the authorities must warn the public that weather conditions make it inadvisable to travel to work, although in this case it is also unclear whether the fact that meteorological agencies such as Meteocat or AEMET raise alert levels can be considered a government warning. The second interpretation of the regulation is that each worker can exercise their right to stay home if they believe that weather conditions at a particular moment pose a risk to their health or life.
In any case, however, neither scenario would apply to the commuter rail chaos, since the government has not declared any emergency and the Barcelona metropolitan area has not experienced any unusual episodes of rain, snow, or wind that would have required special action from the authorities, as was the case in Valencia two years ago. On the contrary, the incidents in the rail system stem from problems related to the poor condition of the infrastructure, the professor believes.
