Mandatory registration of the working day in a company in Spain

The Spanish Social Chamber of the National High Court issued the judgment of 4 December 2015 giving an affirmative answer to the question raised on the obligation of companies in Spain to keep track of daily work hours.

The National High Court considers that the obligation to register the working hours of each worker, as provided in Article 35.5 of the Workers’ Statute (E.T.) for purposes of computing overtime, extends to all cases and is not subject only to the effective realization of overtime.

In fact, the requirement to daily monitor the working day has always been in force in the E.T., the main regulation governing the rights of workers in Spain. However, so far this requirement was linked to the computation of overtime. It did not seem mandatory to provide this monitoring for those workers that did not work overtime.

Nevertheless, the National High Court understands that it will be difficult to know if workers really performed overtime when the monitoring and previous record of the working day were absent. This justifies the mandatory character of monitoring the work day of individual workers as well as their legal representatives as a measure of legal certainty.

What does the work day record consist of?

The daily record of the working day is a daily record, which subsequently can deduce and effectively monitor an improvement to the normal working shift, functions as a double check:

• On the one hand, the workers have evidence of the performance of overtime given that the company has a duty to deliver these records monthly
• In addition, representatives of the workers, in the exercise of their rights to information and control, are entitled to receive a copy of the daily register of working day (Art. 35.5 E.T.).

The daily record of the working day must exist in all companies, regardless of their activity or size, whether through mechanical or manual means, and should reflect, each day and individually for each worker, the working hours performed.

Binding character

Confirming this doctrine, companies must implement mechanisms to daily record the shift realized by each of its employees on its payroll. Up until now, companies only did this monitoring with part-time workers for verification of supplementary hours.

For further information on the registration of the working day in Spain,