Labour Updates 2-2013

This legislation update offers a brief summary of the key elements from an employers’ perspective of Royal Decree-Law 1/2013, of January 25, 2013, extending the vocational retraining program for individuals exhausting their unemployment benefit and other urgent measures on employment and welfare for the unemployed, published in the Official State Gazette on January 26, 2013.

• For the fourth time since it was set up, the vocational retraining program for individuals exhausting their unemployment benefit has been extended, and the program may now be automatically renewed for six-month periods where the Working Population Survey (EPA) published before the relevant extension is above the 20% mark.
• The period for reinstatement of the right to unemployment benefit has been extended where, subject to Article 47 of the Workers’ Statute or an insolvency proceeding, an employer has temporarily interrupted employment contracts, on an ongoing basis or otherwise, or has reduced the number of working hours or days, and subsequently terminated contracts under an objective dismissal, a collective layoff or within the framework of an insolvency proceeding. Affected workers will be entitled to reinstatement of the term of their contributory unemployment benefit for the same number of days for which they would have received the total or partial benefit under such interruptions or reductions, up to a maximum of 180 days, provided the following conditions are met:

                   - The interruption or short-time working must have taken place in the period between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2013.

                   - The dismissal or layoff must have taken place between February 12, 2012 and December 31, 2014.

• The provisions relating to training and apprenticeship contracts in cases in which workers have no professional training qualifications or vocational competence certificates have been extended until December 31, 2013 (they were previously in force until February 12, 2013).

The provisions of Royal Decree-Law 1/2013, of January 25, 2013, enter into force on January 27, 2013 (the day following the date of its publication in the Official State Gazette), save with respect to the extension of the period for the reinstatement of the right to unemployment benefit, which is effective from January 1, 2013.