Reduction of working time: on sex discrimination taking into account two new rulings of the Constitutional Court

Abstract

Two recent rulings of the Constitutional Court come back on the constitucional dimension of the reduction of working hours due to child rearing. In the first of them, it was considered that the right to non-discrimination on grounds of sex had been violated because the appealed judicial decisions had not weighted the effects of a change in the working hours of the affected worker on her care responsabilities and on her capacity to reconcile them with her work. In the second, the Court decides that the change of functions that the company orders the plaintiff worker does not imply an indirect discrimination on ground of sex because that change did not cause any damage and because, in any case, it responded to organizational needs of the company. In this article, a criticism of both judgments is formulated, based in the fact that neither of the two weights with adequacy enough the legal position of the workers who suffer particular disadvantages derived from the enjoyment of rights to reconcile family life and work. However, some positive assessments are also made, focused on small advances in the constitutional protection of these child-rearing rights