Spain’s labor ministry drafts law that forces firms to screen every new hire’s mental health

Madrid just dropped a regulatory bomb on Spanish boardrooms: every worker must pass a medical exam the day they sign a contract, and companies that ignore follow-up mental-health checks can be sued into reinstating anyone who walks. The draft, published 16 March and effective 2 January 2027, rewrites the 1995 risk-prevention statute into a surveillance machine that starts before the first coffee break.

Consent is optional if the job can kill

The 44-page text, signed by second-deputy premier Yolanda Díaz after employers stormed out of negotiations, forces firms to keep living medical dossiers. Refusal to undergo baseline tests is legal only when the work is “non-hazardous”; everywhere else the exam is mandatory and the doctor can flag a worker as unfit without appeal. The clause copies chemical-plant rules and pastes them onto desk jobs: if burnout metrics spike, the same protocol triggers.

Periodic screenings are baked in. After six months of sick leave the firm must redesign the post or face an “objective dismissal” suit that the employee can convert into paid resignation plus unemployment benefits. The provision flips the burden: it is no longer the worker who must prove disability; it is the company that must prove the job is safe to return to.

Small firms get a state-paid snitch

Businesses below ten staff, long exempt from internal safety committees, will now be visited by territorial prevention agents—roving inspectors appointed by regional governments from union and employer lists. Their brief: spot-check paperwork, photograph ergonomic sins and forward serious breaches to labor prosecutors. Micro-companies can knock 30 % off training invoices and get penalty discounts if they pay fines within ten days and renounce appeal, a carrot-and-stick formula copied from tax amnesties.

Mental injury is finally classed as an occupational disease. The bill orders the labor ministry to draft a standalone psychosocial regulation within twelve months of enactment, setting exposure limits for shift volatility, digital after-hours messages and “humiliation protocols”. Gender and age variables must be modeled into every risk map, a first in EU labor code.

Employers call the text “a HIPAA on steroids”; unions call it “the right to survive the office.” Lawmakers have until 1 December 2024 to file amendments; after that, companies have 26 months to build the medical files or start writing severance checks.