Spain Tells Employers: If an Algorithm Shapes the Job, Workers Have a Right to Know
Published on 10/07/2026 at 00:50 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Starting 5 October 2026, Spanish employers that lean on automated systems to run their workplaces must come clean about it. Real Decreto 723/2026, the country's new royal decree on workplace algorithms, obliges companies to tell staff when software is calling the shots on core working conditions — or changing them.
The measure partially transposes the EU's Directive (EU) 2019/1152 on transparent and predictable working conditions into Spanish law.
What counts as a workplace algorithm
Chapter II of the decree reaches any employment relationship lasting longer than 4 weeks. It covers software-based systems that steer essential parameters of daily work: decisions on working time and how work is distributed, the assignment of specific tasks, and how pay is set. Systems that influence career development, the place of work, or the termination of employment fall under the rules as well.
Certain sectors get their own treatment. Separate provisions apply to workers in fishing, maritime work, and the public service, among others.
Explain the rules, not the code
Article 3.2(k) of the decree spells out what the notification must contain. Employers have to inform employees that such workplace algorithms exist, and set out the underlying specifications, criteria and operating rules by which the systems make or prepare decisions.
Disclosing the actual source code, however, is explicitly not required.
New hires get the paperwork up front; existing staff must ask
Timing is tied to the start of the employment relationship. For new recruits, the required information must be handed over in writing before work formally begins.
Anyone already employed on 5 October 2026 follows a different route: they can request the missing details about workplace algorithms from their employer. Once such a request lands, the company has a statutory 30 working days to respond.
From union-level rights to individual ones
Real Decreto 723/2026 widens what Spanish law already provided. Its predecessor, Real Decreto-ley 9/2021 — better known as the Ley Rider — had confined information rights on workplace algorithms to worker representatives. The new framework pushes that transparency entitlement down to the individual worker.
Similar concerns are surfacing well beyond Spain. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the No Robo Bosses Act (SB 947) on 30 September 2026, part of a package of 13 AI laws. It bars employers from basing termination or disciplinary decisions solely on automated decision systems. The California statute takes effect on 1 January 2027, with regulatory enforcement beginning in July 2027.
