Teleworking still has a very limited run in the Basque Administration today. Taking into account the Basque Government and its autonomous bodies, barely 900 employees out of more than 100,000 use this formula. The Basque Executive has approved a new decree that regulates teleworking for all public sector employees and opens the possibility of accessing two weekly teleworking days to those public employees who meet a series of conditions.
In Euskadi, around 153,000 employees work in the Public Administration, taking into account the Basque Government, its autonomous bodies, the Provincial Councils, the Town Halls and the General State Administration. The new decree approved by the Basque Executive does not affect all of them, but rather regulates the conditions to access teleworking for employees of the so-called Basque Public Sector: Basque Government, autonomous bodies and public entities, public companies, public sector foundations and consortia from the public sector. In other words, it affects more than 100,000 employees.
This new decree updates a previous regulation, from 2012, which for the first time and in a pioneering way regulated teleworking for public employees of the General Administration of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country and its Autonomous Bodies. Now, 11 years later and after a pandemic that generalized teleworking has been overcome, the Basque Executive seeks to facilitate access to teleworking based on “common reference minimums” which, however, “allow for subsequent adaptation to the specificities of each area sectorial”.
The new regulation establishes that, in general, “the working day of teleworkers” will be distributed so that “two full days a day services are provided in the teleworking modality”, although for “certain jobs” it may be established “different work modalities”.
Likewise, the decree specifies that “in no case may the daily work be divided for its provision in face-to-face work and teleworking.”
The decree, on the other hand, establishes that teleworking “will be voluntary and reversible”, although the jobs “whose effective provision is only guaranteed with the physical presence of the employee at the workplace cannot be exercised through this modality”. In other words, this option of teleworking is not open, to give a few examples, to teachers, health personnel or the vast majority of ertzainas.
Along these lines, the standard specifies the conditions under which it will be determined whether a position is susceptible to teleworking: degree of digitization, degree of general autonomy of the position, work interaction, or degree of dependence on the supervisor. In any case, it is clear that there are many positions that require the physical presence of the employee.
Likewise, the regulation states that in each sector a monitoring commission for teleworking will be created to control and supervise this type of work.
Teleworking was mentioned as one of the measures proposed by the Minister of Labor and Employment of the Basque Government, Idoia Mendia, with a view to “retaining talent and facilitating reconciliation”, in this case, in the private sector. Specifically, Mendia proposed a pilot experience in private companies to test the possibilities of generalizing the four-day workday without a reduction in salary, promoting teleworking and, thirdly, favoring the participation of workers in strategic decisions, through “A proposal to test codetermination in the workplace”.
Therefore, the implementation of teleworking in the private sector is also on the agenda of the Basque Executive.
