At a glance
- Under Spanish law, companies are required to provide average values of salaries, salary supplements, and extra-salary perceptions, broken down by gender.
- However, the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no need to provide individual remuneration information for employees who have no comparable colleagues.
The Supreme Court has considered the issue of whether the obligation to provide average remuneration values justifies including identifiable salary data.
Spanish law mandates that companies maintain a remuneration record with the average values of salaries, salary supplements, and extra-salary perceptions of their workforce, broken down by gender and categorised by professional groups, professional categories, or equivalent job positions. This information must be made available to employee representatives annually, granting them full access to the register.
Contrary to the National Court's opinion, which deemed the processing of this data justified due to the register's legitimate purpose, thus overriding the individual's data protection rights, the Supreme Court upheld the company's appeal. The Supreme Court stated that no law requires the inclusion of data in the salary register that would allow the identification of an employee's individual remuneration.
The salary register aims to ensure pay equality between men and women. In cases where comparison is not possible, the unions had not demonstrated a specific need to disclose data that would allow the identification of an employee's individual remuneration.
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