The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has endorsed that a company access personal information of the partner or spouse of an employee to establish if a change of working hours is appropriate to reconcile work and family life with the care of minor children.
In a ruling dated February 27 to which Efe has had access, the social chamber rejects an appeal filed against a September 2024 ruling by the social court No. 10 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
This is the case of a supermarket stocker whose working day ran from Monday to Sunday, from 4:30 a.m. to 12:50 p.m., with Fridays and Sundays as days off, and who requested the specification of working hours to be able to care for her two children aged two and eight.
The woman requested to be assigned a schedule from 07:00 to 15:00, claiming that she did not have family support.
The court considered the company's counteroffer to be adequate, which was a morning shift from 08:00 to 16:20, from Monday to Sunday, with four afternoons a month according to organizational needs, and with weekly days off of 48 hours.
Since the father of the minors has a schedule from 05:30 to 13:30, the court pointed out, by starting her working day at 08:00 the woman could take her children to school before starting her working day, with the other parent taking care of picking them up upon their departure and taking care of them in the afternoons.
With regard to weekends off, the court of first instance emphasizes that it is not justified, since the father does not work on Saturdays and Sundays and can take care of the children in the absence of the mother.
This organization would avoid a "significant imbalance" in the organization of shifts and "overload" the establishment's afternoon shifts.
The TSJ endorses this criterion and recalls that the Workers' Statute establishes a right to reconciliation conditioned to the "reasonableness and proportionality" of the requested adaptation and taking into account the organizational or productive needs of the company.
There is no free configuration of the working day by the worker, and the company cannot be required to make "unreasonable or disproportionate" decisions that affect its organization.
That is why it is logical that the company can access "not only the personal or family circumstances of the applicant, but also those of the other parent, in a logical attempt to achieve a balanced distribution of family responsibilities", add the magistrates, who refer to a 2011 ruling by the Constitutional Court.
