The National Court establishes that sick leave for family members is 5 business days, not natural days

MADRID, 26 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Social Chamber of the National Court has issued a ruling in which it determines that the 5 days of leave for various cases of illness, accident or hospitalization of family members, approved in Royal Decree-Law 5/2023, must be considered as days skilled, not natural.

The ruling, which USO reported this Friday, thus clarifies for the first time how the days of this new leave should be computed, as well as the two-day leave due to the death of a family member, which should also be understood as business days.

The ruling of the National Court partially upholds a union claim against the 'contact-center' collective agreement, signed before Royal Decree-Law 5/2023, which stipulated these days as calendar days, while annulling an agreement subsequent to the norm signed in a joint commission by CCOO, UGT and the sector's employers.

The ruling partially upholds the claim presented by USO, to which subsequent claims from CCOO, UGT and CGT were added, and makes clear the interpretation that should be made on how to compute the days of leave due to death and new leave to care for family members.

The latter, which derives from the Family Law and was finally approved by Royal Decree in June 2023, is applied, for a period of five days, in cases of serious accident or illness, hospitalization or surgical intervention without hospitalization that requires rest. domiciliary and can be requested by the spouse or de facto partner, as well as by relatives up to the second degree by consanguinity or affinity, including the blood relative of the de facto partner, and even by any person other than the above who lives with the worker. in the same home and that requires its effective care.

David Sánchez, responsible for the 'contact-center' sector of the USO Services Federation, has celebrated this ruling because, as he argues, "the majority of companies that are part of this sector always interpreted that the enjoyment should be in days It is now clear that this will not be the case.

"This ruling was highly anticipated not only by this sector, but by all workers, since the legislative change had left the interpretation of whether the days were workable or natural days without jurisprudence. The previous jurisprudence was in this sense of considering permits workable. of this nature, but we did not have any ruling that supported the same thesis about the new legal framework. That is why this ruling is so important, which can be extrapolated to all sectors," highlights María Eugenia Moreno, USO lawyer and author of the lawsuit against the collective agreement.