Until now, when a woman worker in the commercial distribution sector in department stores wanted to exercise her right to breastfeed or bottle her son, that is, to use the lactation permit at work, he suffered a significant reduction in salary. The woman earned only the base salary and the complemetos, and the variable and the objective concepts were not included in the pay.
Due to this circumstance, the unions against the Employers of Large Distribution Companies (ANGED) filed a lawsuit against the large commercial houses and this week the sentence has been handed down. The Social Court of the National Court says that large companies they must pay the full salary to workers who want to use this permit or child care. Approximately 300,000 department store workers could benefit from this failure.
This permit is regulated by Article 37.4 of the Workers' Statute and consists in the fact that working women who want to breastfeed (natural or artificial) to their child under 9 months, have the right to have an hour of absence from work, They can divide into two halves. In addition, if the woman wants to, she can substitute this right for a reduction of her working day in half an hour, both at the beginning and at the end of the day. This permission can be enjoyed by both the mother or the father in case they both work. It is also allowed to accumulate in several days all the reserved hours.
The big companies were misinterpreting this regulation by reducing the salary in unison with the reduction of the day. This group includes such important centers as El Corte Inglés, Carrefour, Alcampo, Leroy Merlin or IKEA, among others.
