In Spain, workers are entitled to 30 calendar days of paid vacation: 22 working days plus the corresponding holidays.
To reach this month, more than 90 years have been necessary, since, back in 1931, the Second Republic promulgated a paid holiday of 7 days, which in 1965 increased to 15, in 1976 it reached three weeks, and in 1983, the current thirty.
With data from the World Bank in hand, it is not the most generous European country —the French, British and Germans have eight, six and two more working days per year, respectively—, but it is not the most miserly either: Belgium, Holland and Ireland enjoy two business days less.
By the way, the European Union is an oasis compared to Asia - China, for example, stipulates between five days and two weeks,
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"Paid vacations cannot be replaced by financial compensation and can be improved through collective bargaining or individual contracts," says Ana Belén Muñoz, professor of Labor and Social Security Law at Carlos III University.
They are recognized in article 38 of the Spanish Workers' Statute.
And they have been guaranteed by the successive community directives on working time.
"The Court of Justice of the European Union has done an important job in laying down jurisprudence that reinforces its link with the safety and health of workers," highlights Muñoz, who considers this paid rest well tied and consolidated, at least from the point of view of quantitatively.
Another thing is the quality, inversely proportional to the number of labor interferences that, due to the work and grace of technology, a worker suffers in his well-deserved 30 days off.
64% of those interviewed by Infojobs for its 2022 digital disconnection report admitted that they answered calls or emails during their summer vacations (in 2021, 74% admitted it);
half of the self-employed claimed to connect “whenever it was necessary”, according to the study, which drew a robot portrait of the most engaged profile: man between 45 and 65 years old, self-employed, with a position of responsibility and vocational profile.
“Digital disconnection is a recognized and regulated right in Spain since 2018;
the problem is that the regulation is not accompanied by sanctions;
the regulations do not say that the company,
… It is a soft, soft right”, confirms Muñoz.
Digital disconnection, which is nothing more than the right to rest in a hyperconnected world, would be strengthened if it were shielded with strict prohibitions;
if it were linked in a direct, explicit way, with safety and health at work, as is the case with vacations.
And if, in addition, the employee uses the means of the company instead of his own.
In other words, if the computer or professional mobile phone, whose number everyone has in the office, where the work WhatsApp groups are, were to stay in a desk drawer during non-working hours.
As long as all these circumstances do not occur, we will continue talking about
trabacations
and other words born to define a new personal-labor scenario of imprecise limits.
A bad future for experts like Muñoz, convinced that disconnection is productive.
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