Employment Contracts Overview

Employment Contracts

• Application: Workers who voluntarily provide paid services for another person (employer/entrepreneur)
• Elements: Voluntary service, personal nature of services, subordination/dependency, working on behalf of others, remuneration
• Conflict Resolution: Actual work conditions take precedence over formally stated contract terms
• Principle of Reasonableness: Decisions and actions must be fair, rational, and justifiable
• Worker Rights: Subject to an employment contract, staff member, affiliated to a union, Subject protected by law
• Employer Obligations: Legally recognized physical or legal entities
• Temporary Agencies: Employers who hire employees through such agencies

Employment Contracts (continued)

• Probation Period: A time period where both employer and employee can end the arrangement without prior notice or compensation
• Maximum Probation Duration: 6 months for qualified technicians, 2 months for others (companies with less than 25 workers), maximum 3 months for non-qualified technicians in temporary contracts, and 1 month otherwise
• Advance Notice: Period before contract termination, crucial for changing conditions, dismissal, etc
• Dismissal: Collective, objective, and disciplinary dismissal, as well as dismissal due to force majeure

Nature of Employment Contracts

• Written and Verbal Contracts: Presumed to exist if someone is providing a service for compensation
• Training contracts (art 11 WS) : Duration between 16 and 30 years, no overtime or night work, no probation period, cannot be concluded if worked in the same company for over 6 months, in indefinite contract
• Training contracts (art 15 WS): Due to production circumstances. Inflexible 6-12 months timeframe, or a 90 day foreseeable period in a calendar year, Substitution for an employee
• Contracts to secure professional practice (3 yrs experience must have passed since the professional degree): Three year gap after graduating, prohibition against formative activities within the same enterprise for more than 3 months.
• Internship agreements: Doesn't establish employment relationship. Effective 1/1/2024 requires registration with Social Security
• Hand-over contracts (prior retirement contractual obligation) : Linked to part-time contracts due to partial retirement, worked full time, contributed 33+ years to the same company. Work should continue for the last 6 years
• Indefinite Contracts: Without time limits in service provision, considered indefinite unless proven otherwise, various types of indefinite contracts for family workers, disabled people, socially excluded people and victims of gender violence.
• Permanent Discontinuous Contracts: Intermittent work activity

Working Day

• Duration: 40 hours/week as average if not agreed otherwise; 9 hours maximum per day (12 hours minimum break between work days) if higher that 6hrs minimum rest will be 15 minutes
• Overtime: Additional hours beyond the agreed limit
• Protection of –18 year olds: cannot work more than 8 hours a day
• Night work: strictly between 22:00 and 06:00, or 24:00 and 05:00
• Breaks: Mandatory during working days if the day is continuous and lasts longer than 4.5 hours
• Rest period: Weekly rest required -2 uninterrupted days
• Holiday: Paid and non-recoverable
• Legal Limitations: Obligations, prohibitions for individuals, minors, etc.
• Paid Vacation: Agreed duration (minimum 30 days)

Distance work (telework) -

• Remote Work Law (10/2021): At least 30% of the working workday within a 3 month period.
• Compliance Requirement: Mandatory minimum content in remote work agreements (inventory, expenses, working hours, workplace, etc)
• Employee/Employer Agreements: Written, voluntary, reversible

Functional mobility

• Ability To Change Tasks: Ability for an employer to change duties according to need.
• Horizontal changes: Same professional group, no reason needed.
• Vertical changes: Change of tasks to different groups, or levels, only on organizational or technical reasons
• External Limits: legal and conventional, with general restrictions concerning employee dignity
• Internal limits: depend on specific circumstance case by case, legal limits for transfers and objective reasons

Company Succession

• Transfers: Change of ownership, legal effects (new employer takes on rights/obligations of old employer)
• Inter vivos: Change in ownership due to action, and is the period when the company is being exchanged between alive people
• Mortis causa: Change in ownership due to death
• Objective and subjective elements: Required for a company transfer to be valid (all essential elements of the company are transferred.)

Dismissal

• Mutual Agreement: Both parties agree to end the contract
• Workers' Unilateral Decision (without cause): Resignation or abandonment (with advanced notice depending on the law )
• Workers' Unilateral Decision (with cause): Substantial change in work conditions (individual or collective).
• Company Unilateral Decision (without cause): Collective or objective dismissal.
• Company Unilateral Decision (with cause): Disciplinary dismissal, force majeure

Leave of Absence

• Forced Leave of Absence: Representation in public office
• Voluntary Leave of Absence: Minimum seniority required in the workplace (minimum of 1 year), minimum 4 months, maximum of 5 years, with no repetition within 4 years (with possibility of extension), but under good faith condition.
• Leave of Absence for Childcare: Up to 2 years, and can be taken in installments/fractions
• Termination of employment Relationship: Contract end, with worker and company obligations (e.g., severance pay), conditions for termination (e.g., mutual agreement, violation), and relevant timeframes

Other Important Information

• Minimum Interprofessional Wage (2024): Daily minimum wage and monthly minimum wage were established, depending on different work conditions.
• Salary Guarantees: Workers' salaries are treated as privileged debt.
• Payroll Processing: Set of rules and procedures for establishing salary structure & internal/external equity