The draft of the Family Law approved last Tuesday by the Council of Ministers puts on the table the possibility of requesting up to 12 years of teleworking after having a son or a daughter. Through a modification of the Workers’ Statute Law, the draft, which is still in the parliamentary phase and may undergo modifications, includes this new right in the name of greater labor conciliation.

“Workers have the right to request adaptations to the duration and distribution of the working day, in the organization of working time and in the form of provision, including the provision of their remote work, to make effective their right to the reconciliation of family and work life. Said adaptations must be reasonable and proportionate in relation to the needs of the worker and the organizational or productive needs of the company. In the event that they have sons or daughters, working people have the right to make said request until the sons or daughters are twelve years old,” the bill literally says.

With the current preparation of the law, the request for teleworking or adaptation of the working day would not be limited to the moment of birth. In other words, if parents have a seven-year-old daughter or son, at the time the law is definitively approved, they could also request it to have five years of teleworking or other adaptations in that case.

In addition to this case of having children under the age of twelve, these rights will also be held by those people who have care needs with respect to sons and daughters over the age of twelve, the spouse or common-law partner, relatives by consanguinity up to the second degree of the worker, as well as other dependents when, in the latter case, they live at the same address, having to justify the circumstances on which the request is based.

In order to prevent requests for working hours from falling on deaf ears, being ignored by companies, the future law establishes that companies will have a maximum of fifteen days to study a request of this type, “presuming its concession if not There is express reasoned opposition within this period”.

Once the negotiation process has finished, the companies, in writing, must communicate their acceptance of the request. “Otherwise, it will propose an alternative proposal that facilitates the conciliation needs of the worker or it will express the refusal to exercise it. When an alternative proposal is raised or the request is denied, the objective reasons on which the decision is based will be motivated.

Likewise, the draft establishes that the worker will have the right to return to the situation prior to the adaptation once the agreed or foreseen period has concluded or when the causes that motivated the request decline. “In the rest of the cases, if there is a change in circumstances that justifies it, the company may only deny the requested return when there are motivated objective reasons for it,” the document states.

The so-called Family Law has obtained the approval of the Council of Ministers in a second round. The wording that it had the first time it was presented is available on the website of the Ministry of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda. However, from the Ministry itself, they point out that there have been changes with respect to that first version, but this right to telework for facilitating reconciliation is still included in the text in its last update. Ministry sources point out that the updated version will be published in the coming days, as approved by the Council of Ministers.

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