Holidays of 22 or 23 working days: how many days are due to each worker?

What does the law say about holiday days? –

Holidays of 22 or 23 working days: how many days are due to each worker?
What does the law say about holiday days?
It is necessary to mention that holidays, to which all members of any company are entitled, regardless of whether they work full-time or have a part-time contract, are a period of paid rest. In other words, the worker is absent from work for a certain period of time while continuing to receive his or her salary.

The Workers’ Statute explains that this paid holiday period is agreed, either in the individual employment contract or, following the collective agreement, between the organisation and the worker. The duration of the holiday may never be less than thirty calendar days per year, although this period of time may be extended according to the collective agreement.

A collective agreement is an agreement between a company and the trade union (“company collective agreement“) or the association of workers in a particular sector and the trade union (“sector collective agreement“) on working conditions, such as pay or holidays.

We can use the sector collective agreement for offices and offices in the province of Valencia as an example. You can consult it in this link.

According to this sector collective agreement nothing special is mentioned regarding holidays, so we have to refer to the main and general law that applies for the whole of Spain, which is called: the “Estatuto de los trabajadores” (Workers’ Statute). This one says “All workers subject to this agreement shall enjoy 30 calendar days of holidays. ”

How far in advance should I know how much holiday I will have?

Employees should be able to find out their holiday dates at least two months in advance.

If the law says 30 days’ holiday, why do I actually get 22 days’ holiday?

The difference between working days and calendar days is another frequently asked question, especially in relation to holidays. First of all, working days are days on which people work, so they are generally understood to be the days between Monday and Friday.

The difference is that if you have 30 calendar days of holiday, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays are included. For example, for someone who wants to take holiday from Monday to Sunday and has 30 calendar days, this will mean a total of 7 days. On the other hand, if you have 22 working days, 5 days of holiday will be counted.

How to calculate working day holidays?

According to the law, workers are entitled to 30 calendar days of holiday each year, which is equivalent to 2.5 days for each month worked. Therefore, if a person works in a company for six months, he/she will be entitled to 15 calendar days.

When holidays are counted in working days, the worker will be entitled to 1.8 days per month worked. Therefore, to find out how much holiday a worker is entitled to in a given period, it is necessary to multiply 1.8 by the number of months.

It is important to remember that there are certain sector collective agreements that provide for a greater number of working days of holiday. The example for Valencia (office workers) is:

“All workers subject to this agreement shall enjoy 30 calendar days of holidays. Those days must be enjoyed in the period between 1 June and 30 September, both inclusive.
When full holidays (means , all the days) are taken outside this period, unless requested by the worker, the company will pay a holiday allowance in the amount of 5 days of the standard wage from this agreement.”

In this case the conditions of the collective agreement say that if you did not take any holiday at all between 1 June and 30 September you can have 5 more days of holiday.
It is very important to note that these 5 days of holiday will not be paid out of the regular salary you are receiving, but will be paid out of the salary according to the collective agreement table and it is highly likely that it will be lower than what you are receiving. To give an example many contracts have their job title defined as “administrative assistant” and in that case you are paid 977 euros gross per month.

Thank you  for reading this post, if you think we have been able to help you or if you still have any questions, you can always contact me via WhattsApp (+49 1520 8381499) or e-mail (erica@taxandlawspain.com).