Educational leisure

School camps at risk due to the new time recording: "We should triple the price."

Leisure companies are demanding that their activities be included in the category of special days.

Fundesplai will provide scholarships to up to 5,500 children this summer, a 3.6% increase.
18/10/2025
3 min

BarcelonaThe Ministry of Labor and Social Economy has stepped on the accelerator to implement stricter work time recording across the country. The Spanish government expects the text of the regulation, which is currently in the hearing phase, to come into force in less than six months and require all companies to ensure that their employees detail the hour and minute they begin and end their workday, as well as any breaks they take during the day. However, the leisure sector warns that, at least for now, this new regulation has forgotten its specifics, which could jeopardize school and family camps as we know them.

The reason for this complaint made by both the Catalan Association of Leisure, Education and Culture Companies (Acellec) – which brings together micro, small and medium-sized Catalan companies that provide services in the field of educational leisure – and the Association of Summer Camps and Hostels of Catalonia (ACCAC) – of Catalonia – is that in the day-to-day running of an activity such as summer camps it is "impossible" to comply with the criteria established by the future regulations.

Broadly speaking, the problem is that in a summer camp, and especially when they host school groups, users need 24-hour care, so that, although the workers have their working hours, they spend several days sleeping in the summer camp and during their non-working hours they must have. This availability, to varying degrees depending on the time of day, as well as staying several days at the camp or shelter, is compensated, according to the agreement, with some financial bonuses and also with more days off. The problem is that this gradual availability is impossible to capture in a rigid time record.

"Of course we have working hours and of course our teams have working hours, but the type of service we provide has logistical demands that require certain levels of flexibility," claims Acellec manager Pep Montes. ACCAC Secretary General Imma Ruiz also warns of this: "We are not talking about spaces where an eight-to-five registration can be carried out, like an office or a factory. In the educational leisure sector, there are specificities that require regulation with some regulatory intelligence."

Although both Montes and Ruiz insist they are in favor of measures regulating workers' working conditions, they warn that if flexibility isn't applied to time recording in the leisure sector, their activities could become almost luxury products. "If a summer camp always has to have someone with fixed time recording, we would have to triple the work shifts and, therefore, triple the price. Only families relying on dollars would be able to access them," warns Montes.

Special days

In an attempt to find a solution to the problem that summer camps and hostels, as well as other leisure sectors such as summer camps, may encounter in less than half a year, Acellec and ACCAC are calling for collective bargaining to allow the leisure sector to regulate the recording of working hours as if they were working days. In other words, they are demanding a unique approach similar to that applied to the working hours of firefighters, police officers, or coach drivers on international trips. "We propose that the decree incorporate a provision," specific or express reference to the recognition of this type of activities within the regime of special working hours provided for by labor legislation," insists Ruiz.

Still related to the future regulations - which also provide for workers to clock in digitally -, Montes warns that in some summer camps and shelters there is little coverage and this can make things difficult. I have a summer camp in the middle of Pallars, it is very likely that I will not be able to immediately synchronize the data of the time record of each worker," warns the manager of Acellec.

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