From June 2023, workers can have five days of paid leave for hospitalization and caring for family membersregulated in the Royal Decree-Law 5/2023 as one of the measures aimed at promoting the reconciliation between work life and family life.
As established in the text of the rule published in the BOE, workers have the right to a paid leave of five days “for serious accident or illness, hospitalization or surgery without hospitalization requiring home rest spouse, de facto couple either relatives up to the second degree by consanguinity or affinity”.
The leave coverage also extends to the worker’s cohabitants or blood relatives.
How it works and how to request the five-day permit
In order to have the days available, yes, the worker must meet the conditions for which this permission is dispensed and communicate it through the appropriate channels and in a prior and justified manner to the company. The permit is counted from the first business day from the causing event.
A recent ruling from the National Court that The five days of the permit must be business days, and not calendar days: Only weekdays count and not weekends or holidays.. The worker may also decide when to establish the days of leave in the event that hospitalization or care lasts more than five days.
Can I use up the five days of leave even if my family member is discharged or recovers?
A common question if It is possible to spend all the days of the leave if the family member recovers or is discharged before it: this regard is still not clear, although the first rulings in this regard are disparate.
Two sentences recent, in Catalonia and in Aragoncontemplate this assumption. In any case, it is proven that hospital discharge is not equivalent to medical discharge, since the family member may need care after discharge. In that sense, the question is: Can the worker exhaust the leave even if the family member is discharged?
In the event that the family member recovers, already discharged and without needing careboth courts agree that the key is the fact that caused the leave: if the family member recovers in two days, is discharged and returns to work, The worker who has requested the five-day permit cannot use the remaining three days.