Yolanda Díaz strikes back and implements new timekeeping regulations

BarcelonaAfter this Wednesday the The Congress of Deputies will reject the bill to reduce working hours. At 37.5 hours, which also included a new time record, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor took less than 24 hours to make a move: the Ministry of Labor opened the prior public consultation on the draft Royal Decree for the reform of the time record in an attempt to approve it separately from the reduction in working hours.

The text, which will be open to contributions from this Friday until September 26, details some of the project's objectives. Among other things, the regulation seeks to specify each type of working time recorded. The document indicates that the entire working day must be recorded, but considers that "it must be indicated whether the working time is effective or on-call, or whether the hours are ordinary or extraordinary." This is a counterattack by Díaz, who has often stated that what employers fear is not so much the reduction in working hours as the time control record that seeks to put an end to unpaid overtime.

The ministry also argues that the existence of a work record has as its main objective to protect workers, "not only in the remuneration aspects of their employment relationship, but also in the right to respect for the agreed conditions, to the conciliation of family and personal life and to the protection of health - it points to the insufficient text that the royal decree contains and that hinders its effectiveness without adequately preventing regulatory non-compliance and harmful excesses of working hours, so serious for the health of workers and for fair competition between companies", Treball points out.

Greater precision and remote recording

Treball emphasizes the importance of guaranteeing maximum working hours and minimum breaks, "avoiding illegal overtime and thereby ensuring the most effective compliance with relevant European regulations." It also underscores the importance of ensuring adequate oversight by the Labor Inspectorate and Social Security. "This could determine the possibility of requiring electronic registration, with identity verification mechanisms," the ministry adds.

For their part, the general secretaries of the CCOO and UGT unions, Unai Sordo and Pepe Álvarez, called on the Spanish government this Thursday to approve this new time registration at the next Council of Ministers, a regulation they consider "key" to stopping the "massive fraud" of unpaid, unpaid, and unpaid overtime.