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The Health Ministry includes all demands within its powers in the new national Statute for Healthcare Staff

Dec 8, 2025 | Actualidad, Current affairs, Featured, Interview, Portada, Post, Revista Lloseta, Thursday Daily Bulletin, Tradition

Spain’s Ministry of Health has confirmed that the draft of the new Statute for Healthcare Personnel incorporates every request that falls within its legal powers. The text is the result of an extensive negotiation process involving more than 60 meetings with trade unions, strike committees, regional governments and professional bodies.

The new Statute aims to maintain a unified regulatory framework for all staff in the National Health System, prevent territorial inequalities, facilitate mobility and enable consistent workforce planning. The Ministry stresses that the proposal reaches “the highest possible level of development” allowable under a state-level basic law, while respecting regional authority. Blocking its approval over issues outside the national competence would mean losing a historic opportunity for a long-awaited reform.

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1 The Health Ministry includes all demands within its powers in the new national Statute for Healthcare Staff. Key improvements in the new Statute
2 What the Statute cannot include

The Health Ministry includes all demands within its powers in the new national Statute for Healthcare Staff. Key improvements in the new Statute

1. Greater job stability

  • Mandatory recruitment exams every two years with maximum deadlines.
  • Full digitalisation of merit scoring and administrative processes.
  • New safeguards to reduce temporary contracts and interims.

2. Guaranteed mobility

  • Annual transfer competition through an open and permanent system.

3. Limits on excessive workloads

  • Maximum weekly working time: 45 hours.
  • Creation of the “excessive workload” category, requiring mandatory preventive intervention.

4. New on-call duty model

  • Legal limit reduced to 17 hours (down from 24).
  • Mandatory rest before and after on-call shifts without generating time debt.
  • Limits on weekly duties and reinforced rest periods.

5. Broader protection for night and difficult shifts

  • Extended exemptions for pregnancy, illness, and childcare.
  • Continuation of exemptions for staff aged over 55.

6. Strengthened work–life balance

  • Regulated schedule flexibility.
  • Mandatory advance notice of working hours.
  • Compulsory Equality Plans with specific reconciliation measures.

7. Improved rest periods

  • Breaks are recognised as working time.
  • Compensatory rest within 14 days.
  • Explicit regulation of rest linked to on-call duties.

8. Workforce planning rules

  • Teams must be structured to avoid chronic overload; HR must be adjusted when excessive work is detected.

9. Updated professional classification

  • Transition to the MECU/MECES training-based structure, with no loss of salary or core duties.

10. Stronger health surveillance

  • Mandatory interventions by Occupational Health Services when working time limits are exceeded.
  • Inclusion of psychosocial risk assessments.

11. Formal recognition of training, teaching and research

  • These activities must be incorporated into functional planning.

12. Boost to collective bargaining

  • New topics may be negotiated: handover time, time-tracking, Equality Plans, and special activity programmes.

13. Regulation of shift-handover time

  • Officially recognised and negotiated as part of the work organisation.

14. Reinforced legal guarantees during emergencies

  • Rest periods may only be altered with preventive reports and without affecting vulnerable groups.

15. Clear pathway for early-retirement coefficients

  • Framework to begin procedures for professions exposed to toxic, dangerous or strenuous conditions.

16. Participatory regulatory process

  • Contributions from unions, regional authorities and professional bodies; parliamentary process open to amendments.

What the Statute cannot include

  • Intrusion into regional competence for service organisation.
  • Exact salary amounts, determined by each regional health service and Budget Law.
  • Early retirement, regulated exclusively by Social Security.
  • A mandatory 35-hour week, which is up to the regions.
  • Scheduling of shifts and on-call duties, under regional management.
  • A guarantee of reduced temporary employment, which depends on regional implementation.
  • Over-detailed regulation that may risk unconstitutionality.

The Ministry reiterates its commitment to improving working conditions within the legal limits and urges all parties to seize this opportunity to modernise the public healthcare system after more than twenty years.