Time Control Law

We already mentioned that the objective of this law is to ensure compliance with the established working hours to support the legal certainty of the employee and the employer. The idea of this blog is to summarize and explain in detail everything related to this law.

What type of workers and companies does the time registration apply to?

Hourly recording applies to all workers, regardless of their category or professional group, to all sectors of activity and to all companies, whatever their size or organization of work, as long as they are included in the scope of application that defines article 1 ET. Companies are obliged to record the daily working hours also with respect to “mobile”, commercial, temporary, remote workers or any other situation in which the labor benefit is not carried out, totally or partially, in the workplace of the company. The only peculiarities or exceptions are the following:

• Labor relations of a special nature
• Workers who have a specific or particular regime regarding registration of working hours

What means can be used to record  hourly control?

The standard does not establish a specific or predetermined modality for the daily recording of the day, limiting itself to pointing out that it must be carried out day by day and include the start and end times of the day. For this, and regarding the rest of the configuring elements, it calls for self-regulation, through collective bargaining or the company agreement.

Any system or means, on paper or digital, capable of fulfilling the legal objective, that is, providing reliable, unchangeable and non-manipulable information afterwards, either by the employer or by the worker himself, will be valid. For this, the information of the working day must be documented in some type of written or digital instrument, or mixed systems that guarantees the traceability, reliability and invariability of the working horse registered.

Can companies unilaterally establish their own working day registration systems?

Yes, within certain margins: the law provides that collective bargaining or company agreements are responsible for the organization and documentation of the time record, as well as the specific system (manual records, digital platforms, lathes, etc.) or the specific form to complete them, incorporating all those aspects that are considered necessary for the fulfillment of its purpose. This provision allows the different types of companies, sectors and professional occupations to have a model or system adapted to their characteristics, and specify, in accordance with the definitions contained in the agreement, conditions such as interruptions, pauses, flexibility in the distribution of working time or others.

Is the entire time elapsed between the registered start and end times of the daily workday considered as effective working time?

The formal obligation is the daily record of the working day, so it must contain, by express legal mention, “the specific start and end times of the working day for each worker”. However, it is also convenient that everything that is part of it be subject to keeping, especially that related to mandatory daily breaks legally or conventionally provided for, or voluntary, to avoid the presumption that all the time between the start and end of the registered working day constitutes effective working time.

When the legal, conventional or contractual expression of these interruptions or intra-day breaks is clear, predetermined and global, the daily record may evade those internal configurative elements of the daily work, because they are identifiable in relation to those other instruments that provide certainty and security of the work time performed and attributable.

How are the hours of workers traveling to clients recorded?

In relation to workers posted outside the usual work center, with or without overnight stays, the daily recording of the working day does not alter the application of the general statutory rules, and the effective working time must be recorded.

All this information is recorded in the Spanish “Guide on the registration of working hours“, a file published by the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Social Security and whose objective is to facilitate the implementation of the mentioned law.

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