Permanent seasonal work in Spain: seniority, benefit and call-up

The short answer

Your seniority counts the whole duration of the employment relationship and not the months you have worked¹. Your unemployment benefit counts only what you have contributed in the previous six years⁴. Two articles look at the same calendar and reach opposite answers, and almost everything that surprises people about this contract comes out of that contradiction.

Two opposite rules over the same calendar

The second paragraph of article 16.6 of the Workers' Statute says, literally, that permanent seasonal workers «have the right to have their seniority calculated taking into account the whole duration of the employment relationship and not the time of service actually rendered»¹. The rule arrived with the royal decree-law 32/2021 reform and has been in force since 30 March 2022².

Article 269.1 of the Social Security Act does the opposite. Its first sentence says the duration of unemployment benefit «shall depend on the periods of contributed occupation in the six years prior to the legal unemployment situation»⁴. And you only contribute while working.

So, with the same contract and the same calendar:

One rule counts the gaps and the other does not. Neither is a mistake: one measures your bond with the employer and the other measures what the system has received for you.

The carve-out almost nobody quotes

The sentence in article 16.6 does not end where most people cut it. It ends like this: «with the exception of those conditions that require different treatment given their nature and provided it responds to criteria of objectivity, proportionality and transparency»¹.

So the general rule is the whole relationship, and there are conditions that by their nature may be calculated differently. Severance for dismissal, which is measured in years of service rather than in performance, is counted over the whole relationship. Other seniority-linked conditions may not be, and there what your collective agreement says governs.

What a permanent seasonal contract actually is

Article 16.1 reserves it for three things¹:

1. Work of a seasonal nature or linked to seasonal production activities.
2. Work of intermittent performance that does not have that nature, but which has «certain, determined or undetermined periods of execution».
3. Commercial or administrative service contracts which, being foreseeable, form part of the company's ordinary activity.

A temporary work agency may also enter into one with a person hired to be assigned to a user company¹.

What changed in 2022, and why so many contracts were reclassified

The second of those grounds is new, and it is the most consequential. The previous wording of article 16.1 said the permanent seasonal contract was for work that «does not repeat on certain dates», and added that discontinuous work which did repeat on certain dates «shall be subject to the rules on the indefinite part-time contract»¹.

Before 2022, then, work that always started on the same date was not permanent seasonal: it was an indefinite part-time contract. The reform absorbed that case, because the wording in force expressly covers periods of execution that are «certain, determined or undetermined»². If someone tells you your fixed-date work does not fit this figure, they are quoting the old law. And the figure that old wording pointed to has its own history: paragraph 3 of article 12, which turned a part-time contract for fixed and periodic work into an indefinite one, was repealed by the same Royal Decree-Law 32/2021, so today the part-time contract no longer has that paragraph.

The call-up: how, when, and what happens if it never comes

Article 16.3 imposes three things¹:

• The criteria for the order of call-up are set by the collective agreement or, failing that, a company agreement, and they must be objective and formal.
• The form: the call-up «must be made in writing or by another means that allows a record of due notification to be kept», with the precise indications of the conditions of your return and «with adequate notice».
• The calendar: the company must give the workers' legal representation, with sufficient notice and at the start of each calendar year, a calendar of the expected annual or half-yearly call-ups, and the details of actual registrations once they happen.

If the call-up never comes, the last paragraph of the same paragraph says you may bring «the actions that apply», and that the time limit starts «from the moment of the absence of the call-up or from the moment they became aware of it»¹. There is a change of wording worth keeping in mind here: the previous article referred to the «dismissal procedure before the social courts» and the one in force speaks generally of the actions that apply¹. Time limits in this area are short, so advice is not something to postpone.

How long the inactive period can last

For seasonal work article 16 sets no maximum at all: the season lasts as long as the season lasts. For the third ground, the service contracts, it does set one, and it is a limit almost nobody mentions¹:

Where permanent seasonal hiring is justified by the conclusion of service contracts, subcontracts or administrative concessions, the periods of inactivity may only occur as waiting periods for redeployment between subcontracts.

And the second paragraph adds that sectoral agreements may set a maximum period of inactivity between subcontracts «which, absent a provision in the agreement, shall be three months»¹. Once that period has elapsed, the company «shall adopt the interim or definitive measures that apply»: leaving you waiting indefinitely is not one of them.

Benefit between call-ups, and the ceiling nobody mentions

A permanent seasonal worker's inactivity is a legal unemployment situation, and it is one in its own right. Article 267.1 of the Social Security Act lists the situations by letter, and letter d) reads, in full: «During the periods of productive inactivity of permanent seasonal workers»³.

Where it sits is worth noticing. Letter a) is termination of the contract, letter b) is suspension and letter c) is a reduction in working hours³. A permanent seasonal worker's inactivity is none of the three: the contract is not terminated, it is not suspended for one of those causes, and the hours are not reduced. The law gives it a separate letter because it is a separate case.

The ceiling is sixty days per month of season

Here is the figure that changes the planning of any seasonal worker, and it comes from putting three numbers from article 269 together⁴:

• The window is six years.
• The scale advances in bands of 180 contributed days, and each band is worth 60 more days of benefit.
• A month contributes 30 days in groups with a monthly contribution base.

Six times thirty is one hundred and eighty, which is exactly one band wide. So every month of your annual season is worth sixty days of benefit, and once the window is full of seasons there is nothing left to add:

The consequence is counter-intuitive and it is exact: twelve years of contract give the same benefit days as six. What moves the ceiling is the length of the season, not seniority. And with a season of a single month per year the window accumulates 180 contributed days, below the 360 the scale requires for the first band, so no contributory benefit is generated at all.

Two caveats on that table. The first is that your real contributed days are on your working-life report: the conversion of thirty days per month is the convention for monthly contribution bases, not a reading of your record. The second is that if your permanent seasonal contract is part-time, article 269.2 refers the count «to whatever the implementing regulations determine»⁴, and then the sum changes.

A worked example with real numbers

Six years of employment relationship, six-month seasons, a gross annual season salary of €21,000, unfair dismissal.

The difference, €5,695.89, is exactly what article 16.6 is worth in this dismissal⁵. On six-month seasons the figure doubles, because half the calendar was inactivity.

And for the benefit the rule turns around. Those same six years are 36 contributed months, that is 1,080 days, which give 360 days of benefit rather than the 720 the same calendar worked continuously would give⁴. What is more, 360 is already the ceiling for a six-month season, so twelve years of contract would not add a single day.

You can repeat the sum with your own months in the permanent seasonal work calculator, which shows both seniority counts, what the difference is worth in severance, and the band of the scale your record falls into.

What else you can ask for

Two rights from the same article that fall out of most conversations about this contract.

Ordinary permanent vacancies. Article 16.7 requires the company to inform permanent seasonal workers and the workers' legal representation of vacancies for ordinary permanent posts, so that they can apply for voluntary conversion¹. It is not a promise of conversion; it is an obligation to inform, plus a procedure.

What your collective agreement can add. Article 16.5 lets sectoral agreements do three things: create a sectoral employment pool for periods of inactivity, agree that contracts be concluded part-time where the peculiarities of the sector justify it, and establish «a minimum annual call-up period and an end-of-call-up amount to be paid by companies to workers»¹. That last one is money that may be waiting for you at the end of the season, and it is set by your agreement rather than by the law, so you have to go and look for it.

And one more, from paragraph 8: during periods of inactivity permanent seasonal workers are treated as a priority group for access to the training initiatives of the vocational training system for employment¹.