Time record and overtime, consequence of not having it or not managing it correctly.
The publication of Royal Decree Law 8/2019, of March 8, on urgent measures for social protection and the fight against job insecurity during the working day, in its article 10 added a paragraph to article 34 of the Workers' Statute establishing the obligation for all companies to have a daily record of working hours for all workers, which should include the start and end time of the working day. work.
The objective of this obligation is fundamentally to avoid the performance of overtime by workers and if they are carried out, it must be accredited so that they can be paid by the company or, failing that, compensated with rest.
What happens in the event of a legal claim?
Until the aforementioned reform, it was the worker who had to prove that he had performed the overtime in response to a judicial claim. After the reform entailed by Royal Decree Law 8/2019, it is enough for the worker to be able to provide evidence that the overtime hours have been carried out so that the burden of proof is reversed, and it is the company which must prove that they were not carried out or that if they were carried out they were compensated with rest.
The Court of Justice of the European Union in the ruling of May 14, 2019, in case C-55/18, established that without a registration system it is difficult for the worker to prove that they have worked overtime.
In the legislation we do not find any specification on the criteria to carry it out, so in principle we understand that any system is valid as long as it is reliable and cannot be modified by the company. This will be the one that decides which system will be used for this registry.
The company must keep the working hours record for four years as it may be required by the labor inspection.
Part-time contracts
Under article 10 of the Workers' Statute, part-time workers will not be able to perform overtime, in these cases they will be called complementary hours and may not exceed the agreed legal limit.
The hours of part-time workers will be recorded day by day and will be totaled monthly, and a copy must be delivered to the worker along with the salary receipt of the summary of all hours worked in each month, taking into account both ordinary and complementary hours. The employer must keep the monthly summaries of the working hours records for a minimum period of four years.
What happens if the company does not have it or does not manage it correctly?
This fact is classified as a serious sanction under Article 7 of the Law on Infringements and Sanctions in the Social Order. The amount of this penalty varies between €751 and €7,500.
Companies have the obligation to monitor that workers comply with this obligation and if they do not, formally sanction non-compliance, which may be done through a verbal or written warning, imposition of a serious work misconduct in which both the date and description of the facts must be stated, suspension of employment and salary, and in the case of maximum seriousness of the fact, the company may proceed to disciplinary dismissal.
In this way the company ensures that the registration is correct, anticipating a possible complaint to the labor inspection or judicial claim.
