Overview
- The Ministry of Labour opened formal negotiations with employers and unions on Wednesday to start transposing the EU pay-transparency directive that was due on June 7.
- A draft circulated to social partners would require companies to keep pay registers, give anonymized individual and average pay by sex, publish salary bands in job ads, ban asking about prior pay, and force justification for differences above 5%.
- The proposal would oblige firms with 50 or more employees to define and publish objective criteria for promotions and pay progression to curb arbitrary or gender-biased advancement.
- Unions UGT and CCOO welcomed the talks but demanded a reliable working-hours registry as a precondition, setting a July 31 deadline to approve the registry or halt further negotiations.
- Experts and unions warn the measures will be harder to enforce because Spain’s large share of involuntary part-time work and female concentration in low-pay sectors drive much of the gap and hourly pay calculations depend on a functioning hours registry.