Fine of 7,500 euros if your boss sends you messages outside working hours

With the arrival of teleworking and the hybrid day, the line that separates the working life from personal life has been made increasingly thinand fades even more when the electronic devices that the company facilitates enter stake.

As remember The sports worldthe use of company mobiles and messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Telegram has resulted in many employees receive messages from their bosses even after working hours. To stop this practice, the Workers Statute Includes an article in which employees are protected (Already the bosses) with him Right to digital disconnectionunder sanctions that can reach up to 7,500 euros.

First of all: who is the mobile? Before starting to designate the limits of data disconnection, it is convenient make use of your device staff For work purposes.

That means that, if the company has not facilitated a mobile and a company telephone line, the employee’s personal telephone number cannot be included in WhatsApp groups or other similar apps by the company. This would mean an infraction of article 5 of the Data Protection Law by spreading without consent personal data such as the worker’s phone number.

In the event that both the device and the telephone line are owned by the company, they can implement this type of communications because, in that case, the data that is shared do not belong to the worker but to the company.

Right to disconnection out of the day. However, although communications do not violate data protection regulations, article 20 bis of the Workers’ Statute, explicitly recognizes the Right to digital disconnection Outside the workday, prohibiting the company from carrying out any type of communication with the employee, although the devices from which it is carried out are of its property.

According to the regulations, the worker is not obliged to respond to these communications. A recent sentence From the Superior Court of Xustiza de Galicia it goes a little further and establishes the absolute prohibition of companies to send communications to workers outside their working hours, not even should when when An answer is not expected.

Digital intimacy and business control. Article 20 bis too Protects explicitly The “intimacy in the use of digital devices placed at your disposal by the employer.” This means that, even when used Mobile or company portablethe activity of the employee outside their working hours should not be monitored without justification or consent.

The only case in which the company could Supervise these devices It would be if there is a clear and justified internal policy based on the labor control that allowed it. However, article 20 bis warns that this supervision can never invade the life and personal communication of the employee, so any attempt to geolocate or monitoring out of time would be out of law.

Sanctions for offending companies. Failure to comply with the right to disconnection enables the Labor Inspection to impose A series of sanctions In the event that the company maintains repeated contacts outside working hours, especially when they occur without justification or compensation.

Depending on the severity of the case and the size of the company, fines can range from 751 euros to 7,500 euros according to the severity of the faults or the size of the company. These sanctions seek to stop abusive practices that violate the rest and intimacy of the workers.

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