Paternity leave will be mandatory in the first six weeks

Companies will have three years to implement equality plans and salary records, depending on the number of workers.

The Government wants to guarantee that labor equality between men and women is fulfilled immediately. To the point that it turns the right to paternity leave into an "obligation" during the first six weeks after childbirth. This is reflected in the draft of the Royal Decree Law that the Executive is negotiating with employers and unions.

In addition, the Executive's project modifies, among other provisions of the Workers' Statute, article 48. And it literally says: "The birth will suspend the employment contract of the parent other than the biological mother for 16 weeks, of which the six uninterrupted weeks immediately after childbirth, which must be enjoyed full-time". All this, "for the fulfillment of the duties of care provided for in article 68 of the Civil Code". This provision reads as follows: "Spouses are obliged to live together, be faithful and help each other. They must also share domestic responsibilities and the care and attention of ascendants and descendants and other dependents in their care."

With this, the Government, and also the unions, want to ensure the total recovery of the mother, while the father takes care of all the domestic and bureaucratic tasks that the birth of a child entails, as Elena Blasco, Secretary of Equality, explains to EXPANSIÓN of CCOO.

Therefore, several consequences follow from this measure. The first is that of the eight weeks of paternity that the father is going to have this year, as of the Royal Decree, six will be compulsory, as soon as he has a child, and at the same time as the mother. The other two can be enjoyed at another time. The same will happen in 2020, when paternity leave is extended to twelve weeks, and sixteen in 2021.

The second consequence is the concern that this measure raises in the CEOE employers, because there may be cases in which the father and the mother work in the same company, and both are absent during the first six weeks of maternity/paternity, as explained by the business sources consulted by EXPANSIÓN.

collective bargaining

Until the entire permit, 16 weeks, in 2021, the Royal Decree calls for collective bargaining to organize these cases in which the father and mother work in the same company. Of course, as long as the first six weeks of leave for both are respected. Precisely, pressure from employers has led the Government to modulate the implementation of some measures in companies. Measures such as the following: companies are required to implement an equality plan according to the following schedule: this year companies with more than 150 workers will have to implement it. In 2020, those with a workforce of more than 100 employees. In 2021, the equality plan must be in place in all companies with more than 50 workers.

It is the same evolution contemplated by the Royal Decree for the implementation of the salary registry that companies must have. Except for the name of their beneficiaries, the workers will have the right to know everything concerning wages, professional groups and division by sex.

With this, the Government says in the draft of the norm that "it will be presumed that there is wage discrimination due to sex, when in a company, with at least 25 workers, the average remuneration received by employees of one sex is higher than the of the other by 25% or more".