The Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díazhas advanced this Friday that the paid leave to be granted to the employees affected by the DANA who are unable to attend work for justified cause shall be 100% of salary and shall not have an established period of days.
The causes for employees affected by the flood to avail themselves of these leaves may range from lack of connectivity with the workplace, through destruction of housing, search for missing family members, to care for dependents. During the time the leave is requested, the worker will be paid and will contribute.
“We have decided to place an undetermined date because the causes are very different.. Therefore, we are not going to set a deadline, except only in the case of death leave, which we are extending to five days from the day of burial. That is the only term we are going to incorporate. The rest of the leaves, that is to say, justified absences to work, are going to be indefinite”, said the vice-president in declarations to TVE.
The reason for not incorporating deadlines to these permits, she explained, is that it is not possible to know on what date the communication routes, the connectivity of cell phones, fixed telephones or water will be operationalamong other circumstances that may prevent workers from coming to work or teleworking.
Díaz has reminded that these paid leaves will be, unlike what happened in pandemic, non-recoverablei.e., workers affected by the DANA will not have to make up the hours or days on which they did not go to work.
These permits are part of the ‘labor shield’ that is expected to be approved by the Council of Ministers next Monday, which will be held a day earlier than usual due to the agenda of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. This shield will have retroactive effects from October 29th and will also include an extraordinary subsidy for domestic employees and the implementation of the ‘Me Cuida Plan’, among other measures.
But “the great novelty”, emphasized Díaz, will be the “list” of paid leave to which those affected by the DANA will be able to apply, with perception “full” of the salary.
The Vice-president has indicated that the labor measures that the Government will adopt for those affected by the DANA “will not be subject to the geographical limitations of the catastrophe”. In the event that there are mechanisms that allow going to work (for example, the provision of a bus by the company if you do not have a private car and you have to travel), the vice-president has indicated that you can go to work as long as there are no risks for the worker. “The mandate we have given is that if you cannot physically go to work, you can telework. But if there are mechanisms to be able to go safely, without risk to life, of course you can go to work,” he stressed.
Diaz has also taken the opportunity to ask companies to comply with the law and protect their workers. “I am doing a daily monitoring of companies that are not complying with the current legality,” he said, and then warned that the Labor Inspectorate “knows exactly which companies are complying and which are not”..