This week Alberto Núñez Feijóo suggested that a worker on sick leave should earn less and described labor absenteeism as "a cancer". The PP leader's statements spread like wildfire, generating controversy and the need for a clarification of them by his own party, which has tried to put out a fire as best it could, a fire that both from the Government and from political forces on the left spectrum were determined to fuel.
At the center of the public debate are labor rights related to illness, rest, and social protection; rights that were not born from a single reform or spontaneous concession and whose conquest is worth reviewing.
In Spain, they have been built over more than a century through strikes, labor laws, Social Security, the Constitution, the Workers' Statute, and collective bargaining.
The eight-hour workday: the first major modern labor achievement in Spain
One of the first major milestones achieved by Spanish workers was the maximum eight-hour workday. It came after the strike of La Canadiense, a labor mobilization that paralyzed Barcelona for weeks and forced the government at the time to approve the Royal Decree of April 3, 1919, which set the maximum legal workday at eight hours per day or 48 per week.
That regulation marked the beginning of an idea that seems basic today: the worker not only sells their labor power but also has the right to rest, health, and a life outside of employment.
1931: the first paid vacations
The second major leap came during the Second Republic. The Law on Employment Contracts of November 21, 1931, published in the Gaceta de Madrid on November 22, recognized for the first time in a general way the right to paid vacations. The regulation established a minimum annual leave of seven uninterrupted days for those who had worked for at least one year, without salary deduction.
That right was the direct predecessor of current vacations, now regulated in the Workers' Statute.
Francoism brought social insurance without union freedom or the right to strike
During the Franco dictatorship, social protection regulations were also approved that are part of the historical evolution of the system, such as Law 193/1963, on the Bases of Social Security, and its development through Decree 907/1966, which organized the Social Security system of the time.
Francoism developed social security within a dictatorship that prohibited real union freedom, denied the right to strike, outlawed independent unions, and subjected labor relations to the Vertical Syndicate. That is, there were benefits and labor regulations, but there was no free collective bargaining or democratic capacity for workers to defend their rights.
A good part of these improvements also responded to social pressure, to the growth of labor conflict in late Francoism, to the need to modernize the economy, and to the regime's attempt to contain the labor movement, not to a full recognition of labor rights in a democratic sense.
1978: the Constitution turns labor protection into a democratic mandate
With the Constitution of 1978, the framework changed completely. The current Magna Carta recognized union freedom, the right to strike, collective bargaining, and the maintenance of a public Social Security system. Furthermore, Article 40.2 orders public authorities to guarantee necessary rest by limiting the working day and providing paid periodic vacations.
Here lies the key difference with Francoism: labor rights become linked to a democratic system, with free unions, collective bargaining, strikes, and judicial protection.
1980, the Workers' Statute consolidated the current system
Law 8/1980, of March 10, the Workers' Statute, was the norm that structured the democratic labor model. It regulated working hours, vacations, leave, contract suspension, labor representation, collective bargaining, and the basic framework of workers' rights.
That text was consolidated and updated to reach the current Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015, which maintains key rights such as paid annual leave, set at a minimum of 30 calendar days, and the protection of the worker when temporary incapacity prevents enjoying vacations on the scheduled date.
Current sick leave: temporary incapacity and Social Security
Today, sick leave is legally framed as temporary incapacity. It is regulated by the General Law on Social Security, approved in its consolidated text by Royal Legislative Decree 8/2015. Article 169 considers temporary incapacity the situations of common illness, occupational illness, or accident, whether work-related or not, when the worker receives medical assistance and is unable to work.
The law also sets the requirements for collecting the benefit: in cases of common illness, 180 days of contributions in the previous five years are generally required, while in cases of accident or occupational illness, no prior contribution period is required.
Furthermore, the legislation already provides for controls and sanctions against fraud: the benefit can be suspended or lost if the beneficiary acts fraudulently, works during sick leave, or unreasonably refuses medical treatment.
The role of collective agreements: why some workers receive 100% while on sick leave
One of the central points of the debate opened by Feijóo this week is that not all workers receive the same amount during sick leave. Social Security establishes a benefit, but many collective bargaining agreements improve this coverage to reach 100% of the salary.
This is why trade unions have reminded the leader of the PP that what is agreed in collective agreements has normative force and that unjustified absenteeism can already be sanctioned.
From Article 52.d of Rajoy to its repeal: the most recent evolution of sick leave
The debate on medical leave is not new. One of the most controversial episodes in recent years was the application of Article 52.d of the Workers' Statute, which allowed for objective dismissal due to the accumulation of absences from work, even if these were justified by illness, provided that certain percentages fixed by law were exceeded.
Although this provision was already part of the Workers' Statute, the labor reform approved by the Government of Mariano Rajoy, through Royal Decree-Law 3/2012, later converted into Law 3/2012, eliminated one of the requirements that existed until then: that the entire company workforce reached a certain level of absenteeism. From that moment on, it was generally sufficient for the worker to exceed the individual thresholds of absences provided for in the regulation for this cause of objective dismissal to be applied.
The constitutionality of Article 52.d was upheld by the Constitutional Court in 2019, a decision that provoked strong opposition from unions and social organizations, who considered that the measure penalized those who were repeatedly ill, especially people with chronic pathologies or disabilities.
The situation changed a few months later. In February 2020, the coalition government presided over by Pedro Sánchez approved Royal Decree-Law 4/2020, subsequently validated by Congress and converted into Law 1/2020, which repealed Article 52.d of the Workers' Statute. The Executive justified the measure by understanding that the protection of the right to health must prevail and that the legal system already had sufficient instruments to punish unjustified absences without allowing dismissal for the accumulation of justified medical leave.
A right built by laws, strikes, and collective bargaining
As we have seen, medical leave, paid vacations, and limited working hours are not recent privileges. They are labor rights built in layers: the eight-hour workday of 1919, paid vacations of 1931, social security of the 20th century, the Constitution of 1978, the Workers' Statute of 1980, and the current General Law on Social Security.
The controversy over labor absenteeism in Spain, aired by Feijóo, has brought a fundamental issue back to public debate: how to combat fraud without eroding a protection system that allows being ill not to automatically mean losing salary, employment, or economic security.