Discreet search · The exit

Twenty working days.But not from the letter.

Q: How much severance am I entitled to?

Article 51.4 refers to article 53.1 for individual notification, and that article requires the employer to make available to the employee, at the same time as the written communication is delivered, severance of twenty days per year of service, pro rata by months for periods under a year and capped at twelve months' pay. What is agreed in the consultation period can improve that amount, and in collective redundancies it often does. The article itself allows the employer not to make it available where the ground is economic and it cannot pay, stating this in writing and without the employee losing the right to demand it; and the Supreme Court has accepted collectively agreed deferrals that respect the minimum and are not abusive. The eleventh transitional provision does not apply to this tariff: it governs the calculation of unfair-dismissal compensation.

Q: How long does the consultation period last?

Article 51.2 sets a duration of no more than thirty calendar days, or fifteen in companies with fewer than fifty employees. The consultation must cover, as a minimum, the possibilities of avoiding or reducing the collective redundancies and of mitigating their consequences through accompanying social measures such as outplacement or training. In addition, article 51.4 requires at least thirty days to pass between notifying the labour authority that the consultation period has opened and the effective date of the dismissals.

Q: I am fifty-five or over. Does anything change?

Article 51.9 provides that, in collective redundancies by companies not in insolvency proceedings that include employees aged fifty-five or over who did not hold mutualista status on 1 January 1967, there is an obligation to pay the contributions funding a special social security agreement, on the terms of the General Social Security Act; that referral splits the cost between company and employee by age bands, so it is not unlimited employer contribution. Article 51.11 requires a financial contribution to the Treasury in redundancies including employees aged fifty or over, but as established by law: age alone is not enough, there are requirements of size, proportion of those affected and results. In any case it is a cost to the company, not a sum the employee receives.

Q: Does senior management fall within a collective redundancy?

Article 12 of Royal Decree 1382/1985 says that, save for the particular rules in its preceding articles, the special senior management relationship may be terminated on the grounds and through the procedures provided in the Workers' Statute. How that works in a specific procedure, and how it counts towards the thresholds in article 51.1, is not settled by reading the article: it is a question to put to a Spanish employment lawyer, particularly if it is unclear whether your relationship is ordinary or special.

The period for challenging a dismissal is one of lapse — article 59.3 says so, not prescription — and once exhausted it does not reopen. But when it starts depends on the route the procedure takes, and in a collective redundancy it is almost never the day of the letter. This page sets out the deadlines and figures, each cited to its article.

20 working days of lapse, with a start date to be worked out — not assumed

This does not replace a lawyer, and in this area you need one: the deadlines do not live in the Workers' Statute alone, but also in the Spanish Labour Procedure Act. It gets you to the consultation knowing what to ask, with the file's dates in front of you. The calendar below is the one for collective redundancies on economic, technical, organisational or production grounds; force majeure under article 51.7 has its own procedure.

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The premise

Two clocks at once,running in opposite directions.

The first is the legal deadline: twenty working days, which article 59.3 calls lapse «for all purposes». The difference from prescription is that once exhausted it does not reopen. What is not true — and worth dismantling straight away — is that it runs from the letter: in a collective redundancy the start depends on whether there was a collective challenge, and it is set by article 124 of the Labour Procedure Act. Working it out from the date on your letter alone is the costliest mistake on this page.

The second is your job search, which has no deadline but does have an order. Sending fifty CVs the following week, with the story of the exit unresolved and a five-year-old CV, spends contacts that would have gone further with the material ready. That is craft observation, not law.

And a qualification about senior roles, because it is easy to overstate. The employee representatives negotiate the collective terms, and holding the title of director does not put you outside that cover: article 51.2 refers to the interlocutors in article 41.4, who are not always simply «the works council». What there may well be are individual matters worth reviewing separately. It is worth arriving at that conversation with the numbers in front of you.

The urgent and the important do not coincide: the urgent thing is the twenty-day deadline; the important thing is how you will tell this story in six months.

Both can be done, but not in the order in which they present themselves.

The exact words

What counts as collectiveand what does not.

It matters which of the two you are in, because the procedure, the deadlines and what can be negotiated all change. The quoted passages are our translation of the consolidated text of the Workers' Statute; the official version is in Spanish.

The thresholds: how many, and over what period

Article 51.1: there is a collective redundancy where, «within a period of ninety days, the terminations affect at least: a) ten employees, in companies employing fewer than one hundred; b) ten per cent of the company's employees in those employing between one hundred and three hundred; c) thirty employees in companies employing more than three hundred». These are the general statutory thresholds, and the grounds must be economic, technical, organisational or production-related. Terminations on those grounds that are not subject to the collective procedure go through article 52.c), with its own requirements. Working out whether the thresholds are met is not a matter of counting letters: article 51.1 itself requires counting «any others occurring in the reference period on the employer's initiative on grounds not inherent to the employee» other than those in 49.1.c), where there are at least five. And Spanish Supreme Court doctrine brings in the workplace as a reference unit alongside the company. It is a calculation for a lawyer with the data in front of them.

Full closure, with a lower threshold

The same article adds: «terminations affecting the entire workforce of the company shall likewise be deemed a collective redundancy, provided the number of employees affected is greater than five, where this results from the complete cessation of its business activity on the same grounds set out above». The three conditions travel together and should not be dropped: it must affect the entire workforce, arise from the complete cessation of the business activity, and rest on one of those grounds. Closing one site is not closing the company.

What counts as an economic ground

«Economic grounds are deemed to apply where the company's results show a negative economic situation, in cases such as current or forecast losses, or a persistent fall in its level of ordinary income or sales.» And the statute adds a checkable test — not the only possible proof of persistence, but a case that always establishes it: «the fall shall in any event be deemed persistent if for three consecutive quarters the level of ordinary income or sales in each quarter is lower than that recorded in the same quarter of the previous year».

And the drip-feed that stays under the threshold

Article 51.1 addresses it expressly: where in successive ninety-day periods the company carries out terminations under article 52.c) below the thresholds «in order to circumvent the provisions of this article», with no new grounds to justify it, «those further terminations shall be deemed carried out in fraud of law, and shall be declared void and of no effect». If people have been leaving your company three at a time for months, that is a fact worth telling your lawyer.

Spanish Workers' Statute, consolidated text (Royal Legislative Decree 2/2015): BOE-A-2015-11430. This page describes the general framework and is not legal advice: how a specific dismissal is classified depends on facts that can only be assessed by looking at your documentation.

The calendar

Seven deadlinesand not all of the same kind.

Careful not to read them as a sum: the statute sets maximums, minimums and lapse periods, and they do not work the same way. Those for forming the committee and for consultations are maximums — they need not be used up; the thirty days to effect and the plan's six months are minimums; and the one for challenging is a lapse period. What is negotiated, heavily, is the content of the agreement that comes out of the consultations.

First of all: forming the committee, 7 or 15 days

Article 51.2, and the order matters because it is easy to muddle. First the company «must give reliable notice to the employees or their representatives of its intention to initiate the collective redundancy procedure». The committee «must be constituted before the company notifies the opening of the consultation period», and the maximum for doing so is «seven days from the date of that notification» — the notice of intention, not the opening — rising to fifteen where an affected workplace has no legal representatives. Its failure to form does not prevent the period from starting, and constituting it later «shall in no case entail an extension of its duration».

The consultation period: 30 days, or 15

Article 51.2: «a duration of no more than thirty calendar days, or fifteen in the case of companies with fewer than fifty employees». And it has a minimum content, which does not exhaust what can be negotiated: it must cover «as a minimum, the possibilities of avoiding or reducing the collective redundancies and of mitigating their consequences through recourse to accompanying social measures, such as outplacement measures or training or retraining actions». The negotiating committee has «a maximum of thirteen members representing each party».

Thirty days minimum before it takes effect

Article 51.4: once agreement is reached or the decision communicated, the company may notify the dismissals individually «in accordance with article 53.1», and «in all cases, at least thirty days must have elapsed between the date on which the opening of the consultation period was notified to the labour authority and the effective date of the dismissal».

Fifteen days' notice, and six hours a week

Article 53.1.c requires «a notice period of fifteen days, counted from delivery of the personal communication to the employee until termination of the contract». And 53.2 adds something many people never use: during that notice the employee is entitled, «without loss of pay, to six hours' leave per week in order to look for new work».

Twenty working days — and when they start

Article 59.3 of the Workers' Statute sets the length: «shall lapse twenty days after the day on which it occurred. The days shall be working days and the period is one of lapse for all purposes». The start date, however, is not there. For objective dismissal, article 121.1 of the Labour Procedure Act says the period «shall in all cases begin to run from the day following the date of termination of the employment contract», and that «the employee may bring the action earlier, from the moment of receiving the employer's notice communication». In a collective redundancy, article 124 governs: the representatives' claim has twenty days «from the date of the agreement reached in the consultation period or of notification to the employees' representatives of the employer's collective redundancy decision»; where there was no collective challenge, the individual period «shall begin once the twenty-day lapse period for the representatives to bring their action has elapsed»; and where there was one, it «shall begin to run from the date the judgment in the collective proceedings becomes final or, as the case may be, from the judicial conciliation». These are not twenty days you can count off your own letter: the file's dates have to be established.

Fifteen days running against the company

Article 51.2, and it is rarely counted: «if within fifteen days from the date of the last meeting held in the consultation period the employer has not communicated its decision on the collective redundancy to the employees' representatives and to the labour authority, the procedure shall lapse». Do not confuse it with your twenty days: this one runs against the file, not against you, and it is worth watching.

And the outplacement plan, six months minimum

Article 51.10: a company carrying out a collective redundancy «affecting more than fifty employees must offer those affected an external outplacement plan through authorised outplacement firms», «designed for a minimum period of six months», with «training and career guidance, personalised support for the affected employee and active job search». «The cost of drawing up and implementing that plan shall in no case fall on the employees.» It does not apply if the company is in insolvency proceedings.

The figures

What the statute setsand what is negotiated on top.

The statutory severance is a minimum, not a ceiling: in collective redundancies reached by agreement, the agreement often improves it. That is precisely why the consultation period matters.

Twenty days per year, capped at twelve months' pay

Article 53.1.b: the employer must «make available to the employee, at the same time as the written communication is delivered, severance of twenty days per year of service, pro rata by months for periods of less than a year and capped at twelve months' pay». At the same time is the operative phrase, and an unfounded delay is not the norm. But there are two qualifications worth knowing so as not to claim wrongly. The first is in the article itself: where the ground is economic and, because of that situation, the company cannot make it available, it may refrain «by stating this in the written communication», «without prejudice to the employee's right to demand payment once the termination decision takes effect» — alleging losses is not the same as proving inability to pay. The second is not in the text but in case law: the Supreme Court has accepted collectively agreed deferrals, provided the statutory minimum is respected and the deferral is neither abusive nor disproportionate. Neither permits a unilateral delay.

The special agreement from fifty-five (or over)

Article 51.9: in collective redundancies by companies not in insolvency proceedings «that include employees aged fifty-five or over who did not hold mutualista status on 1 January 1967, there shall be an obligation to pay the contributions funding a special agreement» on the terms of the General Social Security Act. It affects your contribution record and arises from statute: it does not depend on appearing in the deal or on the consultations ending in agreement. What it is not is unlimited employer contributions up to retirement — the article refers to the General Social Security Act, which splits the cost between company and employee by age bands. Up to what age each one pays in your case is one of the concrete questions to take to a lawyer.

The Treasury contribution, and its conditions

Article 51.11: companies carrying out collective redundancies «that include employees aged fifty or over shall make a financial contribution to the Treasury as established by law». Two clarifications. First: this is a cost to the company, not a sum the employee receives. It is here because it explains part of the arithmetic the other side brings to the table. Second, in the article's closing words: «as established by law». Age alone is not enough. The referral leads to a statute with cumulative requirements on the size of the company or group, the proportion of those affected who are fifty or over, and the company's results. Having employees of that age among those affected does not in itself trigger the obligation.

Priority of retention

Article 51.5: «the legal representatives of the employees shall have priority of retention in the company». And it opens the door to more: «priorities of retention may be established by collective agreement or by agreement reached during the consultation period in favour of other groups, such as employees with family responsibilities, those over a given age or people with disabilities». If such a criterion exists in your collective agreement or in the deal, it is something to look at before signing anything.

On senior management: article 12 of Royal Decree 1382/1985 says that, save for the particular rules in its preceding articles, that relationship «may be terminated on the grounds and through the procedures provided in the Workers' Statute». How that works in a specific procedure is not settled by reading the article. If it is not clear whether your relationship is ordinary or special, start with the senior management page and take it to an employment lawyer.

If you challenge it

What can be reviewedand to what effect.

This page talks a great deal about deadlines for challenging and almost nothing about what challenging achieves. Here are the basics, and they are what decides whether it is worth it: not every defect leads to the same place.

It is challenged as if it were a disciplinary dismissal

Article 53.3: «the termination decision may be appealed against as if it were a disciplinary dismissal». It does not mean the dismissal becomes disciplinary, nor that the company has to agree: it is the procedural route.

Void, unfair or fair

Article 53.4 declares the decision void where its motive is a prohibited ground of discrimination or where it occurs «in breach of the employee's fundamental rights and public freedoms», and lists specially protected situations — pregnancy, birth, family-leave arrangements — which are not absolute immunities: the statute itself allows a finding of fairness on grounds unrelated to the protection, duly established. And article 53.5 refers to the effects of disciplinary dismissal, with two rules of its own: where the dismissal is fair the employee keeps the severance already received; and where it is declared unfair and the employer reinstates, «the employee must return the severance received», or it is deducted if reinstatement is replaced by compensation. The twenty days and the unfair-dismissal tariff are not added together.

And defects that only create an obligation to pay

Failing to give notice, or an excusable error in the amount, does not in itself make the dismissal unfair; but the obligation remains to pay the salary for the period omitted or to pay the severance in the correct amount. It is a separate claim, and easily lost if nobody makes it. This is where the eleventh transitional provision belongs: it governs the calculation of unfair-dismissal compensation for contracts predating 12 February 2012 — not a top-up of the twenty days — with its own regime of 45 and 33 days and its caps.

And a different door, so the scope of this page is clear: article 51.7 governs force majeure, which requires confirmation by the labour authority «whatever the number of employees affected», with a decision «within five days of the application» and effects from the triggering event. In that case the authority «may decide that all or part of the severance […] be paid by the Wage Guarantee Fund». It is not an automatic payment in every redundancy nor a general guarantee of the company's debts: for that you need article 33, which this page does not develop.

What it costs

Three mistakesfrom the first fifteen days.

These are not lawyers' mistakes: they are mistakes of calendar. All three are made in the week when too much happens at once.

Signing the same day

They hand you the letter and a settlement document, and it is a relief to be done with it. It helps to separate things that are not the same: the receipt, the settlement, any termination agreement, and bringing the action. Two useful, checkable points: article 49.2 lets you request the presence of a legal employee representative when signing the settlement receipt; and article 121.2 of the Labour Procedure Act says that «the employee's receipt of the severance offered by the employer, or use of the leave to look for a new job, shall not bar the action nor imply agreement with the employer's decision». Taking the money is not waiving. What does not exist is a general twenty-day period to decide what to sign: that figure is a procedural lapse period, not a cooling-off window.

Taking it is not agreeing

Letting the deadline pass while negotiating

There are conversations open and promises to improve the exit, and the period keeps running. Where prior conciliation applies, filing the request suspends the lapse period — and it is worth knowing exactly what that means. Article 65.1 of the Labour Procedure Act says time resumes «on the day following the attempted conciliation or mediation, or once fifteen working days have elapsed since filing without it having been held». In other words: it does not grant a fresh twenty days, nor is it an open-ended pause; when it resumes, only the unused days remain. Collective challenges by the representatives are, moreover, exempt from prior conciliation.

Suspends, not resets

Going out to look with no material

Sending CVs that same week, with a five-year-old CV and without being able to say in two sentences why you left. You do not have to choose between protecting your rights and looking for work — they run in parallel — but a conversation with an old contact goes further if you have first sorted out what you are telling. That is craft advice, not a rule.

Material before sending

Four things to ask for, that almost nobody asks for. The selection criteria: article 51.2 requires the opening communication to state «the criteria taken into account in designating the employees affected», and they can be reviewed. The documentation of the grounds, which must accompany the communication along with the explanatory memorandum. If you work in a subsidiary, article 51.8: the information obligations apply «irrespective of whether the decision […] was taken by the employer or by the company controlling it», and the employer cannot rely on the parent not having provided the data. And compliance with the outplacement plan, which the labour authority verifies and can require through the public employment service.

And a note on the story, which is not a legal one: a company closure or a redundancy is not a stain on a career, and in Spain over the last twenty years plenty of people now running companies have been through one. What does count against you is telling it apologetically, or hiding it. One sober sentence, no villains, and then what you built, with its figure.

How ZenitJob handles it

The only thingZenitJob helps with.

ZenitJob plays no part in any of the above: it does not classify employment relationships, calculate severance or review agreements. That is what an employment lawyer is for. What it solves is the second clock — having the material ready before spending the good calls.

Base CV

Your career, in one afternoon

You tell it out loud and it comes back structured into achievements with figures, periods and context. It is the step almost nobody has finished when they start, and the one that turns twenty years into something legible to a stranger.

Diagnostic

Which of your jobs does not stand up

The free analysis walks the CV job by job and flags where an amount, a headcount, a geography or a year is missing. It invents no figure: it lists the ones that are not there. No sign-up, a few seconds.

Tailoring

Few applications, well chosen

With the material written once, each CV and letter is tailored to the specific posting without rewriting anything. That is what stops you sending the same CV to fifty places in the first week.

Control

The process, in one place

Applications, contacts and statuses out of your head and out of a spreadsheet. When thirty conversations are open at once, what gets lost is not morale: it is the follow-up.

Start with the free diagnostic — no sign-up. The other pieces in this series: senior executives: notice and severance, non-compete clauses and, if you are still inside, searching without your employer knowing.

Common questions

Questions about collective redundancy

How long do I have to challenge my dismissal?

Twenty working days, and it is lapse rather than prescription: once exhausted it does not reopen. But when it starts is set not by article 59.3 of the Workers' Statute but by the Labour Procedure Act. For objective dismissal, its article 121.1 counts «from the day following the date of termination of the employment contract» and allows the action to be brought earlier, from receipt of the notice. In a collective redundancy, article 124 governs: with no collective challenge, your individual period «shall begin once the twenty-day lapse period for the representatives to bring their action has elapsed»; with one, «from the date the judgment in the collective proceedings becomes final or, as the case may be, from the judicial conciliation». It is not a count you make off the letter. This page describes the general framework and is not legal advice.

From how many people is it a collective redundancy?

Under article 51.1, where within ninety days the terminations affect at least «ten employees, in companies employing fewer than one hundred»; «ten per cent» in those with one hundred to three hundred; or «thirty employees» in those with more than three hundred. It is also one where the terminations affect «the entire workforce of the company, provided the number of employees affected is greater than five», arising from the complete cessation of activity on those same grounds. The grounds must be economic, technical, organisational or production-related. And the count is not only of letters: the article requires other employer-initiated terminations unrelated to the employee to be counted too, and Supreme Court doctrine adds the workplace as a reference unit alongside the company.

How much severance am I entitled to?

Article 51.4 refers to 53.1 for individual notification, and that requires the employer to make available to the employee «at the same time as the written communication is delivered, severance of twenty days per year of service, pro rata by months for periods of less than a year and capped at twelve months' pay». It is a minimum: what is agreed in the consultation period can improve it, and in collective redundancies reached by agreement it often does. Two qualifications on «at the same time»: the article itself allows the employer not to make it available where the ground is economic and it cannot pay, stating this in writing and without the employee losing the right to demand it; and the Supreme Court has accepted collectively agreed deferrals that respect the minimum and are not abusive. The eleventh transitional provision does not apply to this tariff: it governs the calculation of unfair-dismissal compensation.

How long does the consultation period last?

Article 51.2 sets «a duration of no more than thirty calendar days, or fifteen in the case of companies with fewer than fifty employees», and requires it to cover «as a minimum, the possibilities of avoiding or reducing the collective redundancies and of mitigating their consequences through recourse to accompanying social measures». In addition, 51.4 requires «at least thirty days» between notifying the labour authority of the opening of the consultation period and the effective date of the dismissal.

Am I entitled to an outplacement plan?

Under article 51.10, a company carrying out a collective redundancy «affecting more than fifty employees must offer those affected an external outplacement plan through authorised outplacement firms», «designed for a minimum period of six months», with training, career guidance, personalised support and active job search. «The cost […] shall in no case fall on the employees.» It does not apply to companies in insolvency proceedings.

I am fifty-five or over. Does anything change?

Article 51.9 requires companies not in insolvency proceedings to pay «the contributions funding a special agreement» in respect of employees «aged fifty-five or over who did not hold mutualista status on 1 January 1967», «on the terms provided in the consolidated text of the General Social Security Act» — and that referral splits the cost between company and employee by age bands, so it is not unlimited employer contribution. Article 51.11 requires «a financial contribution to the Treasury» in redundancies including employees «aged fifty or over», but «as established by law»: age alone is not enough, there are requirements of size, proportion of those affected and results. And in any case it is a company cost, not money the employee receives.

Does senior management fall within a collective redundancy?

Article 12 of Royal Decree 1382/1985 says that, «save for the particular rules set out in the preceding articles, this special employment relationship may be terminated on the grounds and through the procedures provided in the Workers' Statute». How that works in a specific procedure, and how it counts towards the thresholds in 51.1, is not settled by reading the article: it is exactly the kind of question to take to an employment lawyer, particularly if it is unclear whether your relationship is ordinary or special. The starting point is the senior management page.

Sources

Where every deadline comes from

Every statutory data point — deadlines, figures, thresholds — comes from the consolidated text of these statutes, cited by article so you can check them one by one; the official version is in Spanish and the quotations are our translations of passages checked against the BOE. Where a passage is cut, the cut is visible. Everything else is flagged for what it is: a summary of an article; Supreme Court doctrine where the literal wording is not enough, cited for what it decides on that point and not as a universal rule; and craft advice — how to order the first few days, what to do with the story — which comes from no statute. Phrases like «received» or «nearly there» are our examples, not quotations.

The BOE consolidated texts carry their own warning: this consolidated text is for information only and has no legal force. And what is here is not legal advice: it is the map that gets you to a consultation with the questions already framed, and with the deadline still open. ZenitJob does not classify employment relationships, calculate severance or review agreements.