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According to the Estatuto de Trabajadores / Statute for Employees, taken from version in force as of 14th of May 2017.
If you are on a temporary contract (not included ´interim´ or ´substitute´ contracts or those part of educational program), either seasonal or related to a specific project, when that ends naturally, your ´finiquito´ should include a redundancy payment based on 12 days/year worked, or pro rata this amount for any months under or over that. If there is a convenio in place for your line of work, this could state more favourable conditions. The amounts mentioned in the Estatuto are the legal minimum.
If your temporary contract is for more than year, your employer should give you 14 days notice.
If you are on an indefinite ´indefinido´ work contract and you´ve been dismissed ´for objective reasons´ then you are entitled to a redundancy payment based on 20 days/year worked, or pro rata for any months over or under that. Maximum redundancy 12 months wages. The employer must give you 15 days notice and during this notice period you are entitled to a maximum of 6 hours off, for job-seeking activities, without having your wages cut.
Objective reasons:
a. Due to the ineptitude of the worker known or affected after his effective placement in the company. The ineptitude existing prior to the fulfillment of a trial period can not be claimed after said compliance.
b. If an employee fails to comply with changing technical demands related to his work, provided those changes are reasonable and the employer has provided sufficient schooling to help the employee adapt. Dismissal cannot take place before at least 2 months have passed since the changes have been incorporated, or the employee has received his formation to deal with them.
c. When employees are dismissed collectively but the amount of employees involved do not meet the requisites to be considered as such formally.
d. For absences of work assistance, even justified but intermittent, that reach twenty percent of working days in two consecutive months provided that the total absence of attendance in the previous twelve months reaches five percent of working days, or twenty-five percent in four discontinuous months within a twelve-month period. Update 2020.
Absences due to legal strike for the duration of the same, the exercise of activities of legal representation of workers, accident at work, maternity, risk during the period of time, will not be computed as absences. pregnancy and lactation, illnesses caused by pregnancy, childbirth or lactation, paternity, leave and vacation, illness or non-work accident when the leave has been agreed by the official health services and lasts for more than twenty consecutive days, or the reasons for the physical or psychological situation derived from gender violence, accredited by the social services of health care or services, as appropriate.
Neither will absences due to medical treatment of cancer or serious illness be computed.
If you are fired for disciplinary reasons and the dismissal is ruled ´procedente´ you will not be entitled to any redundancy.
But if your contract is dated after the 12th of February 2012 and the dismissal is ruled ´improcedente´ then you are entitled either to re-admision of your job, or a redundancy of 33 days per year worked. Maximum of 24 months wages. If your contract is from before this date, the indemnization for an ´improcedente´ dismissal would be 45 days per year worked, for the period you worked before the change in the law, so before the 12th of February and 33 days per full year worked after that. Or pro rata part, of course.
Disclaimer: This is a summary of the relevant articles of the Estatuto de Trabajadores, we advise to consult a professional in labour law when you have been dismissed, on how to act, if you can or need to appeal, on your redundancy etc. There are over a hundred convenio´s in place and it is not within our remit to have detailed knowledge of them all. Redundancy amounts have been lowered since the labour law reform in 2012. If your work contract started before that, different amounts will be applicable for the years prior to the reform.
