Bill proposes a basic statute for forest firefighters

Automatic summary, not yet reviewed

1. The bill would regulate forest fire prevention, detection and extinction services, and support for emergencies in rural and natural areas, as an essential public service, and would set a common basic framework of rights and duties for all forest firefighter personnel.
2. It would require year-round service with enough staff, ban companies that win contracts from assigning or subcontracting the service, and require all personnel to be professional employees or public workers, with no volunteers or self-employed workers.
3. It would give forest firefighters the status of authority agents when exercising their public powers, and classify them into two professional groups: command (team coordinators) and operations.
4. It would create specific rights such as legal assistance paid by the employer, life and disability insurance, pay supplements for danger, hardship or toxicity, overtime paid at least 150 % of the regular hour, and a benefit equal to 100 % of the contribution base from the first day of sick leave due to a work accident.
5. It would set working time limits: a maximum of ten ordinary hours per day, twelve in emergencies, with at least twelve hours of rest between shifts, and would transfer staff to the new company when the service provider changes.
6. It would add measures such as classifying companies under the civil protection code, a specific workplace risk regulation, lighter-duty positions for those who lose physical capacity, early retirement, and a State Commission for Coordination.

Who it affects

• Forest firefighters: They would get a common nationwide framework of rights, training, working hours, pay supplements and early retirement.
• Public and private companies in the sector: They would have to register under civil protection, not subcontract the service, and take on existing staff.
• Public administrations: They would have to guarantee year-round service coverage, objective staff selection, and equality and risk prevention plans.
• Small rural municipalities: Planning would have to guarantee coverage in towns with fewer than 20,000 residents.

Words worth knowing

Subrogación

When a worker moves to the new company that wins the contract, keeping their rights and conditions.

Agente de la autoridad

A person whose orders, when acting in their public role, must be obeyed, and whose resistance has legal consequences.

Segunda actividad

A lighter-duty position for workers who can no longer perform their regular job for medical reasons.

Coeficientes reductores

Percentages that lower the retirement age for people who have worked in very harsh or dangerous conditions.

CNAE

The Spanish National Classification of Economic Activities: the code that records what each company does.

It summarizes the text as it was introduced. It is written by artificial intelligence and may contain mistakes: the official text is what counts. Read the official text · How we make summaries