Yes, you can already sanction phone use in your bar: minor misconduct, two days at most, and ten to do it

The rule is the agreement amending the VI National Labour Agreement for the Hospitality sector, ALEH VI. It was signed on 11 June 2026 and published in the BOE on 4 September 2026.

It runs until 31 December 2030.

Among minor misconducts a new point appears, number 12: "Use of the mobile phone, social networks or electronic devices during working hours unless authorised by the company or in an emergency".

There are two higher steps, and they are not the same. Appearing on social media in the company uniform, on your own initiative and without prior consent, is serious misconduct.

Defaming the company or its brand on social media is very serious, "without prejudice to the exercise of fundamental rights".

The ALEH misconduct and sanctions regime applies to the whole sector, with no headcount minimum. The fifty-worker threshold several outlets have been citing these days belongs to the LGTBI measures chapter of the same agreement, not to misconduct.

The ALEH VI sanctions table has not changed. Minor misconduct ends in a warning or suspension of employment and pay of up to two days.

Serious ones run from three to fifteen days. Very serious ones, from sixteen to sixty days or disciplinary dismissal.

Picking up the phone sits on the first step. A warning or two days. That is the ceiling.

And there is something the bar often takes for granted that has been banned for forty years: you cannot dock it from pay. Article 58.3 of the Workers’ Statute bans "sanctions consisting of reducing holiday leave or otherwise cutting the worker’s rest rights, or a fine of wages".

No fine, no half hour less, no taking away a day off.

Minor misconduct expires ten days after the company learned of it. Serious ones, twenty. Very serious ones, sixty. And in any case six months after it was committed. Article 60.2 of the Workers’ Statute sets that, and ALEH repeats it.

Ten calendar days. In hospitality that is a long weekend and little more.

If you see it on a Friday, mention it in passing and bring it up three weeks later in an argument about something else, it is already worthless.

Here is the fine print.

The misconduct is not using the phone. It is using it without company authorisation. And the company is you.

Think about your last service. Shifts go out on a WhatsApp group.

Bookings come in on Instagram and whoever is free takes them. The delivery driver calls. Commands may even run on the phone.

If you work like that, you have authorised the phone in practice. And that is the first defence the worker will put on the table.

Without a prior instruction, written and communicated to the whole team, the sanction collapses. It has to say what is authorised, for whom, at which moments and on which device.

Once written, it is for everyone. If you apply it to the kitchen porter and not to the bar, you do not have a rule; you have a problem.

Own calculation on the 2026 interprofessional minimum wage, which is the legal floor. With real collective-agreement pay the figures rise.

The 2026 minimum wage is €1,221 a month across fourteen pays, €17,094 a year.

That is about €47 of gross pay a day. Two days’ suspension leave a little under €94 of gross pay unpaid, plus what you save in social contributions.

Now the other column. Those two days someone is missing from the bar on a Friday and a Saturday.

Either a colleague covers and you pay unplanned hours, dearer than the €94. Or you cover it yourself, and that is two full services of yours.

You sanction ninety euros and hand over two shifts. Suspension of employment and pay, in a tight roster, ends up being paid by the house. The same goes for almost all of a restaurant’s real profit: the saving is visible and the cost of covering it never shows up anywhere.

A written warning does not have that problem, and it is what builds reoffending if you ever need to climb a step.

While the headline talked about the phone, the same agreement brought in two things that hit you harder.

Clocking-in now has its own ladder. Two failures or poor practice in the working-time register are minor misconduct. Three to four, serious. Five or more, very serious.

And before any disciplinary dismissal there is a prior hearing. You must tell the worker the facts you attribute and their legal classification, and give them two days to reply before dismissing them. Meanwhile they keep working, or on paid leave if you restrict access.

That is what changes how you dismiss in your business. Not the phone.

1. Write the phone policy in half a page: what is authorised, for whom, at which moments, and what counts as an emergency. Without this, the rest does not hold.
2. Review your own phone use during service before publishing it. If shifts go out on your WhatsApp, that goes inside what is authorised.
3. Communicate it to the whole team and keep acknowledgement. The group chat works as proof; a signed paper works better.
4. If the day to sanction comes, put it in writing, with date and concrete facts, and within the ten days.

"Emergency situation" is not defined anywhere. A call from school at half past two — does it count? The agreement does not say. Until there are judgments, each court decides.

The dates do not line up across sources. The BOE dates the agreement 11 June 2026 and publishes it on 4 September. Some sector outlets give 13 April 2026 as the signing date. The BOE date is the one that counts.

And there is your provincial agreement. ALEH reserves the disciplinary regime to the state level, so this overrides what your province says. If your agreement has its own misconduct list, ask your payroll adviser which one applies before sanctioning anyone. We report the rule; we do not process it.

If a judgment clarifies the emergency point, you will read it here before anywhere else.