Pursuant to Article 148(1) of the Labor Code (“LC”), an employee is entitled to time off from work during a calendar year, amounting to 2 days or 16 hours, due to force majeure in urgent family matters caused by illness or an accident, if the employee’s immediate presence is necessary.
During this leave, the employee retains the right to half of their regular pay.
The employee determines how to use the leave described above during a given calendar year by submitting the first request for such leave.
The rule set forth in the Labor Code is that the employer is obligated to grant this leave when the employee submits the request no later than the day the leave is taken. However, once the employee has finished taking this leave, the employer is required to allow the employee to return to their previous position, and if that is not possible, to an equivalent position under terms and conditions no less favorable than those in effect prior to the leave (Article 186(4) of the Labor Code).
For part-time employees, leave due to force majeure is granted on an hourly basis, in proportion to the employee’s working hours, with any fraction of an hour of leave rounded up to a full hour.
It should be noted that the employee may take advantage of this leave from work only if all the conditions specified in the aforementioned provision are met cumulatively.
The term “force majeure” refers to an external event; this event must be external to the entitled person, as well as extraordinary, and consequently inevitable, unforeseeable, and unavoidable.
The provision of the Labor Code cited above does not define “family matter” nor does it specify the group of persons covered by this term. Therefore, it should be assumed that a family matter should concern not only immediate family members (i.e., parents, children, a spouse, or siblings) but also persons living in the same household.
Although the Labor Code stipulates that an employer is obligated to grant this leave when an employee submits a request no later than the day the leave is taken, this does not mean that the employee grants the leave to themselves and begins taking it without the employer’s approval.
Taking advantage of this exemption does not require the inclusion of specific provisions in the work regulations, as this right stems directly from the provisions of the Labor Code and applies to all employers. Nevertheless, the work regulations may clarify formal matters related to granting this exemption, such as: the form in which the request must be submitted (on paper or electronically), the entity to which the request should be addressed, and the procedure or method for confirming submission of the request.