Government retreats. Parents will still be able to refuse to work at night and on weekends

Government backtracks and drops the brakes on parents refusing to work at night and weekends. Still, there are cases where requests for flexible hours may end up being rejected.

According to , the new proposal delivered by the Government to UGT last week, which brings changes to vacation days, dismissals, training hours and twelfths, also drops the previously proposed brake that made it difficult to refuse work at night or on the weekend.

The current rules on flexible working protect the schedules of workers who live with children under 12 years of age or who, regardless of age, have a disability, chronic illness or, as the new proposal adds, cancer.

In these cases, the worker can choose, within some rules, the start and end times of work.

In the draft that the Executive presented in July, there was a point that said that the flexible schedule, prepared by the employer at the worker’s proposal, should now adapt “to the special forms of organization of working time that arise from the period of operation of the company or the nature of the worker’s duties, particularly in the case of night work or work usually performed on weekends and holidays”.

In the same newspaper, the Commission for Equality in Labor and Employment (CITE) had denounced that this first formulation limited the possibility of workers with children up to 12 years of age to “request and obtain” flexible hours with exemption from work at night, weekends and holidays.

Still, the new version will not always allow parents with young children to always be able to be released from work at night, on weekends or on holidays. This is because flexitime can still be refused based on “imperative requirements of the company’s operation” or “the impossibility of replacing the worker” considered indispensable.