The relationship between an employee and his employer is not always simple and its because of this that it is important to take into account certain regulations in order to really know your rights but also your duties in case of a dismissal.
The labour reform in 2012 made this procedure considerably simpler for companies by allowing them to be much more flexible in managing their employees. In case of the need for dismissal in Spain, employee compensation is reduced from 45 to 33 days per year worked. This compensation can reach 20 days if the company is in trouble. You will have to prove that the company has no profits for 3 consecutive semesters.
Compensation, meanwhile, is limited to 24 months regardless of how long the employee has worked.
Finally, as you will see later, employers can choose from several grounds for dismissal for a more flexible management of their personnel. Henceforth, it is now possible to dismiss an employee who is frequently absent if their absences make up 20% of working time in 2 consecutive months.
Redundancy in Spain covers several types of dismissal. We can speak of dismissal for serious misconduct or redundancy for economic or technical reasons or those related to the organisation or production. Disciplinary dismissal involves serious misconduct from an employee who commits any of the following contractual breaches: absences or repeated and unjustified delays, lack of discipline and disobedience, verbal or physical abuses, breach of trust within the workplace, transgression of contractual good faith, voluntary reduction in work performance, habitual drunkenness or drug taking if this negatively affects the work, harassment for reasons of race, ethnicity or religious, disability, age or sexual orientation, sexual harassment toward the employer or others who work within the company. Dismissal on objective grounds should be based on the following fair criteria: employee incompetence, failure to adapt to changes made to their position or absenteeism. Dismissal may also be on economic or technical grounds or those related to the organisation (these are common to collective redundancies but affect a small number of employees).
Mass layoffs involve the termination of employment contracts. The action is collective if it involves the minimum employees as set by the law. In order to be effective, the dismissal must always be preceded by an administrative authorisation granted under a regulatory procedure after a period of consultation with employee representatives. The legal process for dispute may be initiated if one of these conditions is not met. In order to qualify as collective, termination must allocate a minimum period of 90 days: 10% of employees in companies that employ between 100 and 300 or the entire workforce on condition that there are more than 5 employees when the collective dismissal is the result of total termination of activity based on the previously mentioned causes.