6Contracts with temporary employment agencies
Under Spanish law, the hiring of workers in order to lend them temporarily to another company (the user company) may only be carried out by duly-authorized temporary employment agencies (ETT) and in the same scenarios in which temporary or fixed-term contracts can be made, including training contracts for obtaining professional practice and training contract in alternation.
Therefore, the hiring of workers through ETTs can only be used in specific cases and is expressly prohibited in the following cases:
- To replace workers on strike at the user company.
- To perform work and activities subject to regulation because they pose a particular hazard to health or safety (such as jobs which involve exposure to ionizing radiation, carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic chemicals, or to biological agents).
- Where the company has abolished the job positions it intends to fill by unjustified dismissal or on the grounds provided for termination of the contract unilaterally by the worker, collective dismissal or dismissal on objective grounds in the 12 months immediately preceding the hiring date.
- To lend workers to other temporary employment agencies.
Workers hired in order to be loaned to user companies will be entitled, during the period they provide services at the user company, to the basic working conditions and terms of employment (remuneration, working hours, overtime, rest periods, nighttime work, vacation and public holidays, among others) they would have enjoyed, had they been hired directly by the user company for the same position. The remuneration of the loaned workers must include all economic components, fixed and variable, linked to the position to be filled in the collective labor agreement applicable at the user company.
In addition to temporarily loaning workers to other companies, ETTs can also act as placement agencies where they meet the legal requirements to do so.
