The Supreme Court establishes that the temporary disability resulting from a work accident of permanent part-time workers cannot be calculated with the contribution of the exact day on which the accident occurred. The court points out that, in these cases, the regulatory base must be obtained with the contributions from the previous months provided for in the law, since this system better reflects the worker’s real income and avoids distorted results.
This is established by the Supreme Court under ruling 270/2026 (available at this link from the Judiciary), following the case of a worker who provided services under a multiple employment regime. He had a full-time indefinite contract with UGT and, in addition, he worked as a part-time permanent employee for ALSE Servicios Auxiliares. It was precisely in this second job where he suffered a work accident in November 2018 that led to medical leave.
At first, the mutual benefit recognized the benefit using the contribution from the day of the accident, with a daily regulatory base of 89.87 euros, but later, it said that this calculation was not correct and demanded that the formula provided for this type of workers be applied, which lowered the daily base to 16.03 euros. As he allegedly overcharged, he asked the worker to return 18,574.71 euros.
In the first instance, the Social Court number 1 of Bilbao agreed with Mutualia, and later, the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country confirmed that same criterion. The worker, not being satisfied, went to the Supreme Court arguing that the old rule of the Work Accident Regulations of 1956 should be applied, which takes as reference the remuneration on the day of the accident. However, the High Court rejects this approach and confirms the ruling of the Basque court.
Temporary disability cannot depend on an isolated contribution
The Supreme Court explains that the applicable rule is not the old Work Accident Regulation, but the specific regulation contained in article 248.1 c) of the General Social Security Law and in article 4 of Royal Decree 1131/2002, designed for part-time and discontinuous permanent workers. That is why it is understood that these rules must prevail, as they are more specific and later in time.
The ruling also insists on the purpose of this benefit. As expressly stated, temporary disability seeks to “replace”, even partially, “the salary income that is no longer received, but not ‘improve’ said income.” That idea is key to solving the case.
The Supreme Court warns that taking into account only what was paid on the day of the accident can generate unfair results for workers with irregular jobs. In fact, he points out that “it is not acceptable” that the amount depends “on the randomness of the contributions” on that specific date, because that can make the benefit significantly higher or lower than the income that the worker was receiving before the leave.
With this ruling, it makes it clear that, in cases of temporary disability due to a work accident of permanent part-time employees, the regulatory base must be calculated with the contributions from the previous period established by law and not with that of the day of the accident. In this way, the court reinforces the idea that the benefit must correspond to the worker’s usual salary and not to an isolated reference that could distort their true economic situation.