Last July, Congress approved, at the proposal of the Government, the Organic Law on equal representation and balanced presence of women, known as the "Parity Law," which mandates percentage quotas by gender in large companies, unions, etc. Beyond what that law indicates, what is truly concerning about its approval, publication, and entry into force on August 22, 2024, is that it contains a modification that leaves workers who take advantage of the new five-day leave to care for a family member after an accident, serious illness, or hospitalization, or a work schedule adjustment, unprotected. The error is found in the ninth final provision of the Parity Law, which modifies Article 55 of the Workers' Statute, specifically, the section referring to null dismissals. This alleged error that has "slipped in" involves the elimination of two of the causes or situations of protection against dismissal.
In June 2023, two were added to the already existing causes of automatic null dismissal: voluntary work schedule adjustment and the five-day leave for family members' illness. Well, with the approval of this law, and after the alleged error that has occurred on the part of the executive, these two causes of dismissal have been eliminated in the new law, leaving thousands of workers completely vulnerable, mostly women, who use or had planned to use these labor benefits to reconcile their work and family life. So, the company can dismiss you, and the affected person will have to present evidence that they were dismissed for having used those labor rights.
It is true that the Government has been declaring for days that it is a "technical error" and that it will be corrected as soon as possible, but it is also true that no one from the executive has lifted a finger to correct this "error" before it was published in the BOE.
We demand a solution that rectifies this error immediately. We know that there will be employers who, before the error is supposedly corrected, will take advantage of this situation to carry out dismissals; we cannot allow the clumsiness and lack of competence of the Government to affect a single worker. If the justification for the amendment said that "the current version of the Workers' Statute" has to be modified, they were wrong and modified the previous version of the Workers' Statute. They are taking too long to correct the error.
We are clear that this error cannot go unpunished and must have consequences for those responsible, who will leave thousands of workers vulnerable for weeks, something that cannot be consented to or tolerated.
By the way, as serious as what happened with the Parity Law is, it has had little coverage in the media and shows an inadmissible double standard when it comes to "badly made laws."
