Working conditions and labour laws in Spain

I think that labour law in Spain is generally pretty similar to the UK in that there are health and safety laws, workers have rights, there is maternity and paternity leave, there are arrangements between unions and employers about pay rates, working hours etc.

That said, in the fourteen years that I have been in Spain only one of my employers has ever come close to working within the rules and even then, after I asked a perfectly innocent question about my hourly rate, my salary was suddenly increased! They thought I was thinking about leaving and they were willing to pay a little more to keep me happy.

I worked for a furniture shop and there I had a perfectly legal contract that specified holidays, working hours etc. My employers took absolutely no notice of the contract and paid me an agreed rate of 6€ an hour (I was very happy to have an income when I first arrived and I quite enjoyed the job too).

Since then I have worked in language schools or academies. How it has generally worked is that I ask for a legal contract. The employers give me the contract but, say, I have 20 hours of classes, the employers put, say, ten hours on the contract and then simply pay me a fixed rate per hour - usually nowadays in the 8/9€ per hour range. So the contract pay is, for arguments sake, 11€ which means that the legal contract produces 110€ per week which is then subject to tax and other deductions. That goes through the books but the employer simply gives me 160€ (20x8€). None of the safeguards in the convenio (the agreements that are negotiated with Trades Unions) are followed so, for instance, preparation time is not paid at all, there is no paid (or unpaid) training, if a class is cancelled, because the students fail to show up, then I am not paid, I am not paid for public holidays, I am not paid for the time between classes (imagine a class between 5pm and 6pm and a second from 6.30 to 7.30pm then I will get paid two hours despite the dead time in the middle). Contracts are usually cancelled as a term ends and re-issued as the next term starts. This obviously means that there is no pay for Easter or Christmas or any of the summer holiday. Finiquitos, a sort of severance pay, are not usually paid.

I have worked for one academy and had interviews with a couple of others that wanted me to be self employed. This means that you become responsible for your own Social Security payments and you need an accountant to sort quarterly tax returns, sometimes VAT and other bits and bats. There are discounts for startup self employed people but, once that is exhausted, the Social Security payment is somewhere in the 250 to 270€ range. Pay rates are usually about 10€ gross so, if you worked 20 hours per week the Social Security would take 270 and the tax people around 80 of your 800€. You can maybe guess what happens.

I have a pal who has a real job, a job she earns a living from, working for a big name insurance company. There are rules about false self employed people (there was a recent court case about the bike delivery people) and so the insurance company has several names, several registered companies, and she is given a contract by each of them so that her weekly hours with each firm are below the number where most of the controls apply.

I gave some English classes to a labour law lawyer. He said that, despite a minimum wage, field workers were often paid around 3€ per hour for back breaking work and none of them thought to complain because 3€ an hour is much better than 0€ per hour.

All this said, my wife worked as a sort of downgraded teacher (her qualifications were not recognised in Spain) for a couple of local government set ups and she was paid properly with proper holidays and all the safeguards about sickness etc.

My impression is that there are thousands of jobs which are dealt with properly with all the safeguards and conditions that you would expect but that part time workers, unskilled workers etc. are regularly abused employment wise.