The royal decree-law which the Council of Ministers has just approved ensures that domestic workers will finally enjoy the same rights as other employees. The fact that most of these workers are women means it represents an advance for gender equality in the labour market.
Under the new law, if domestic workers are dismissed and their dismissal is deemed unfair (unjustified), the compensation will be 33 days of their wage for each year of service—not 20 days as before. Previously, an employer could freely withdraw from the employment contract on the basis solely of having lost trust in the person employed in their home. Now this is only possible when there is behaviour which could ‘reasonably and proportionately’ be understood as causing such a loss of trust.
Finally, the Wage Guarantee Fund (Fondo de Garantía Salarial) will pay the dismissal compensation of domestic workers whenever the employer would be insolvent. This it does for all companies.
Two measures complement the new law: first, it is expressly recognised that ‘workers have a right to effective protection regarding occupational health and safety, especially within the scope of preventing violence against women’. Secondly, employers have to pay the social-security contributions of workers regardless of hours worked.
There are 545,700 domestic workers in Spain, 89 per cent of whom are women.
Read on: in English and in Spanish