They change your hours, your pay or your workplace: how to fight it
Last updated 2026-09-01 · Reviewed by Jaime Piñeira Pardo, registered with the ICAM bar, no. 138826
The short answer
You can challenge the decision before the Social Section of the Tribunal de Instancia (the first-instance court) under article 138 LRJS, within twenty working days of the written notification. If the judgment declares it unjustified, you are restored to your previous conditions and compensated for the loss. And if you prefer to leave, you can terminate with twenty days' salary per year of service.
On Monday you are handed a letter: from the fifteenth you move from a fixed morning shift to rotating afternoon and night shifts, and you lose the post allowance you have been paid for four years. The letter mentions organisational reasons in one line and explains none of them. You have two children at school and the morning shift was the reason you took this job. On your floor eight other colleagues got the same letter, all handed out in the same week.
The case, in five lines
- What is brought
- Claim challenging the employer's decision on a substantial change to working conditions or on geographical mobility, under article 138 LRJS, seeking a declaration that it is unjustified or void.
- Before which court
- The Social Section of the Tribunal de Instancia (the first-instance court). This route does not require prior conciliation, and the listing is urgent and takes priority.
- Deadline
- Twenty working days from the day after the written notification of the decision, following the end of the consultation period where there is one. Time does not start running until that notification takes place.
- Who can bring it
- The worker affected by the decision, even if the company did not follow the process in articles 40, 41 or 47 ET. If the dispute concerns other colleagues' priority rights, they must be sued too.
- Financial risk
- The judgment is immediately enforceable and, in individual cases, no further appeal lies: everything is played out in a single hearing. Meanwhile the change is enforceable and you must comply, and if it is upheld all that remains is the option to terminate within fifteen days.
Not every uncomfortable change is a substantial modification
Article 41.1 ET lists the matters that count as a substantial modification: working hours, the timetable and distribution of working time, the shift system, the pay system and the amount of salary, the work and performance system, and duties when they go beyond the limits of functional mobility in article 39.
That list is introduced with an among others, so it is not closed, but it marks the ground. Moving from a fixed shift to rotating shifts and removing an allowance fall squarely within letters c) and d). A minor change of tasks within the professional group, by contrast, usually stays inside ordinary functional mobility.
That same paragraph requires proven economic, technical, organisational or production reasons, connected with competitiveness, productivity or the technical or work organisation. Proven is the key word: a letter invoking organisational reasons without saying which or evidencing them arrives at the hearing with very little to stand on. The company has to say what the reason is and prove it, not merely name it.
Individual or collective: the threshold decides which case this is
Article 41.2 ET treats as collective any modification that within ninety days affects at least ten workers in companies with fewer than one hundred, ten per cent in those with between one hundred and three hundred, or thirty in those with more than three hundred. Below those thresholds the modification is individual and the regime changes completely.
Counting those affected is therefore the first job in the case. If there are nine letters on your floor and another four at a different site within the same ninety day window, the measure may be collective and the company should have opened a consultation period of no more than fifteen days with the employee representatives.
Article 41.3 ET adds an important closing rule: if the company splits the modifications into successive ninety day periods below the thresholds, with no new reasons to justify it, the new modifications are treated as a fraud on the law and declared void and of no effect. Deliberate slicing is not a lawful strategy, it is a ground of nullity.
The clock starts with the written notification, not with the rumour
Article 59.4 ET subjects these actions to the same twenty working day period as dismissal and specifies when it starts: from the day after the employer's decision is notified, following the end of the consultation period where there is one. Article 138.1 LRJS repeats this and adds that time does not start running until that notification takes place.
The practical consequence favours the worker. If the company announced the change at a meeting, pinned it on the noticeboard or said it verbally and only later put it in writing, time starts with the written document. And if it never notified it formally, the period is still not running, however many months the change has been applied.
Article 41.3 ET also requires an individual modification to be notified to the worker and to their legal representatives at least fifteen days before it takes effect. For geographical mobility, article 40.1 raises that notice to thirty days. Notice that was not given is not a detail: it is a breach of the statutory process and it goes into the claim.
Challenging does not cost you the option of leaving with compensation
Article 41.3 ET gives a worker harmed by a modification under letters a), b), c), d) or f) the right to terminate the contract and receive compensation of twenty days' salary per year of service, with periods under a year counted by months, up to a maximum of nine months. For geographical mobility, article 40.1 sets the same rate with a cap of twelve months' pay.
Many people believe they must choose at the outset between leaving with money or litigating, and that is not so. Article 138.7 LRJS provides that a judgment upholding the employer's decision shall grant the worker the right to terminate the contract in those cases, allowing fifteen days for it. The option survives defeat.
That rule changes the risk calculation. Challenging does not close the exit door, it postpones it: win, and you return to your previous conditions with damages; lose, and you can still terminate at twenty days per year within the next fifteen. That is why the decision to litigate is taken by looking at the evidence, not at the fear of ending with nothing.
One hearing only: the individual judgment cannot be appealed
Article 138.6 LRJS provides that judgment must be given within five days and is immediately enforceable, and that no further appeal lies against it, except in cases of collective geographical mobility under article 40.2 ET, collective modifications under article 41.4 and the suspensions and reductions of working time under article 47 that exceed the thresholds of article 51.1.
In an individual matter, therefore, there is no second chance. What is not proven at that hearing is never proven, and no appeal chamber will correct evidence badly proposed or a document nobody asked for. That is why this route, fast as it is, demands more preparation than an ordinary case.
Article 138.3 LRJS offers a tool that is rarely used: the court may request an urgent report from the Labour Inspectorate on the facts invoked as justification for the employer's decision. Asking for it in the claim, where the alleged cause is doubtful, brings into the case a technical examination the company does not control.
If you win and the company does not restore you, the road continues
Article 138.7 LRJS provides that a judgment declaring the measure unjustified shall recognise your right to be restored to your previous working conditions and to compensation for the loss the decision caused during the time it was in force. That loss is claimed and quantified in the pleading, with payslips and documented expenses.
The same article provides for nullity where the decision was adopted in fraud of the law, evading the consultation rules of articles 40.2, 41.4 and 47 ET, and also where its motive is a ground of discrimination or it breaches fundamental rights. A change that arrives right after a claim of yours is examined through that route.
And if the company does not restore your previous conditions or does so irregularly, article 138.8 LRJS lets you seek enforcement of the ruling and termination of the contract on the ground in article 50.1.c) ET. That is the link that turns a breach of the judgment into an exit compensated as an unfair dismissal.
How we run the case, step by step
- 1
Classifying the change and fixing the notification date
We check whether what changed falls among the matters in article 41.1 ET or is geographical mobility under article 40, and fix, document in hand, the day it was notified to you in writing, which is when the clock starts.
- 2
Counting those affected over the last ninety days
We gather how many colleagues received the same measure across the company, not only at your site, within the ninety day window. That number decides whether the measure is individual, collective or a slicing in fraud of the law.
- 3
Gathering evidence on the alleged cause before suing
In the claim we request the documents that support or refute the reasons invoked, and we consider asking for the urgent Labour Inspectorate report under article 138.3 LRJS. On this route there is no second instance to put it right.
- 4
Suing within the twenty working days
We bring the claim under article 138 LRJS seeking a declaration that the measure is unjustified or, where appropriate, void, restoration of your previous conditions and compensation for the loss caused while it was in force.
- 5
An urgent hearing and judgment within five days
The hearing is listed within five days of admission if the Inspectorate report has not been requested. We arrive with the evidence of loss closed, because judgment follows at once and is immediately enforceable.
- 6
Enforcing restoration or opening the compensated exit
If you win, we check that the company genuinely restores you; if it does not, or does it badly, we seek enforcement and termination under article 50.1.c) ET. If you lose, you keep fifteen days to terminate at twenty days per year.
The evidence that decides the case
- The written notice of the modification, with its delivery date and effective date, which fix the deadline and the notice period.
- The old and new shift rosters, or the payslips before and after, which show the real extent of the change.
- The list or testimony of colleagues affected by the same measure over the last ninety days, to measure the collective threshold.
- The minutes of the consultation period, if there was one, and the notification to the labour authority of its opening and the final positions.
- The financial or organisational documents the company produced to justify the cause, or evidence that it produced none.
- Proof of the loss suffered while the measure was in force: pay differences, travel costs or childcare expenses.
What closes the door
- Signing your agreement to the change to avoid conflict and claiming months later. An individual agreement altering your conditions leaves the challenge without an object.
- Refusing to comply with the change while litigating. The decision is enforceable from its effective date and disobedience opens the door to a disciplinary dismissal.
- Counting the period from when you heard about it verbally. Article 59.4 ET counts from the day after the written notification, and that difference saves or loses the case.
- Terminating the contract and taking the twenty days per year before examining the cause, when a judgment declaring the measure unjustified also opens up damages.
- Going to the hearing without having requested the company's documents, on a route where the individual judgment allows no further appeal.
The law that applies
- Art. 41 ET. It allows changes to hours, timetable, shifts, the pay system and amount, the work system and duties where there are proven economic, technical, organisational or production reasons. It sets the thresholds for a collective modification, the fifteen day notice in individual ones, the right to terminate at twenty days' salary per year up to nine months' pay, and the nullity of slicing in fraud of the law. BOE-A-2015-11430
- Art. 40 ET. It governs transfers requiring a change of residence: economic, technical, organisational or production reasons, a minimum thirty day notice and a choice between moving with expenses compensated or terminating at twenty days' salary per year up to twelve months' pay. A judgment declaring it unjustified grants the right to return to the original workplace. BOE-A-2015-11430
- Art. 59.4 ET. It applies to actions against employer decisions on geographical mobility and substantial modification of conditions the twenty working day lapse period used for dismissal, counted from the day after the decision is notified, following the end of the consultation period where there is one. BOE-A-2015-11430
- Art. 138 LRJS. It governs the case: the claim within twenty working days of written notification, the option of an urgent Labour Inspectorate report, a hearing within five days, judgment within five days that is immediately enforceable and unappealable except in collective cases, restoration of previous conditions with damages if the measure is unjustified, and nullity where there was fraud on the law or a breach of fundamental rights. BOE-A-2011-15936
Each article checked against the consolidated text published in the BOE (the Spanish official gazette).
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to work the new timetable while the case runs?
Yes. Article 41.3 ET provides that the modification takes effect on the date given, without prejudice to your challenging it. Refusing to comply suspends nothing and does hand the company a disciplinary ground that can end in dismissal. You comply, record your disagreement in writing and litigate through the route in article 138 LRJS.
Can I take the twenty days per year and challenge afterwards?
The order matters. If you terminate the contract under article 41.3 ET, the relationship ends and the challenge loses its object. What you do keep is the reverse route: article 138.7 LRJS recognises that if the judgment upholds the decision, you still have fifteen days to terminate with that same compensation. Litigate first, decide afterwards.
Nine of us are affected at my site. Is the measure collective?
It depends on the size of the company and on everyone affected within ninety days, not only those at your site. In companies with fewer than one hundred workers the threshold is ten; between one hundred and three hundred, ten per cent; above three hundred, thirty. If the company sliced the measure to stay below without new reasons, article 41.3 ET declares it void.
The company never gave it to me in writing. Have I lost the deadline?
No. Article 138.1 LRJS is explicit: the twenty working day period does not start running until the decision is notified in writing to the workers or their representatives. A modification applied in practice, with no letter, starts no clock at all, even if it has been in force for months. The first step is to record that the notification never existed.
Can I appeal if the judgment only half agrees with me?
In an individual case, no. Article 138.6 LRJS rules out any further appeal except in collective geographical mobility, collective modifications and suspensions or reductions of working time above the thresholds of article 51.1 ET. That is why the matter is prepared as a single instance, with the evidence of loss closed before the hearing and every document requested in the claim.
This guide explains how the action works in general. It does not replace the study of your own case: deadlines depend on when things happened and on what you have done since.