The Council of Ministers next Tuesday will approve a decree that will force employers to provide more information to workers about their working conditions. With this text, the Government transposes a European directive approved in 2019 (relating to transparent and predictable working conditions in the European Union) that should have been sealed in Spanish regulations at the latest in 2022. Four years later, sources from the Ministry of Labor announce that it will be approved next Tuesday and that the delay (which has not yet resulted in a community fine) is due to the fact that they have tried to refine the content and collect contributions from social agents. One of the main novelties introduced by the decree is that companies will have to justify with more arguments when trial periods of more than six months are established, so Labor hopes that this type of agreement will become less frequent.
The Workers' Statute gives scope to collective agreements to establish any trial period, but this is not common. Typically, these agreements between unions and employers already limit the trial periods, at most, to what is established by law when there is no agreement by agreement. That is, a maximum of six months for qualified technicians with indefinite contracts; two months for the rest of those hired in companies with more than 25 employees and three months in those with smaller staff; and one month for employment relationships of less than six months.
Despite this determination when there is no agreement, the law leaves room for the collective agreement to establish other thresholds. What the new Labor decree seeks, which, since it does not have the status of law, does not require the approval of Parliament, is that without this pact between unions and employers, employers are obliged to justify trial periods that exceed six months much better. The ministry does not detail how many agreements or how many labor relationships this scenario affects.
The new text establishes that the company must report the specific duration of the trial period, “whether it is within the six-month limit provided by law or whether it is a longer period established by collective agreement in cases justified by the nature of the employment, by the interest of the worker or by the need to carry out an evaluation of the suitability of the worker in the event of suspension of the employment relationship.” The decree will also oblige companies to provide “information related to the respective obligations of the company and the worker to carry out the experiences that constitute the object of the test.”
Labor considers that abusive trial periods, although not widespread, are still present in many employment relationships, especially in the most precarious groups, such as the hospitality industry. Yolanda Díaz's department has been focusing on this section for some time, given the increase in the end of labor relations due to the trial period, with specific inspection campaigns regarding inspection. The labor reform and the limit it imposed on temporary hiring has meant that more contracts that were previously resolved simply because they lasted a few months now do so based on that trial period.
Labor's original idea was to establish a more restrictive limitation by law, so that the collective agreement could not extend the periods established in the Workers' Statute. However, this bill, approved by the Council of Ministers in 2024, has since been blocked in the Parliamentary Labor Committee due to lack of support.
Beyond this precept, the decree adds new obligations to companies in their provision of information to employees. “The directive seeks to configure a new system that improves transparency and predictability in labor relations and that adapts to the new productive and business realities,” indicates the text that went through a public hearing in March.
The full text of the decree that will go to the Council of Ministers on Tuesday has not been released by Labor, only the part referring to the trial periods. The measure will come into force the week after its publication in the Official State Gazette, according to the ministry.
