Supreme Court lets the Labour Inspectorate add workers from two reports to raise each fine by 50 per cent
The labour chamber upholds the fine on Preventiva Seguros: reports from one inspection add workers for the 50 per cent surcharge.
The labour chamber of Spain's Supreme Court has settled a question that decides thousands of euros in every sanctioning file: when the Labour Inspectorate draws up two separate reports in a single inspection, the workers affected by both are added together to apply the 50 per cent surcharge of article 40.1 e) of the LISOS. Judgment 774/2026 of 6 October (appeal 4622/2024, ROJ STS 4280/2026) dismisses the appeal by Preventiva Compañía de Seguros y Reaseguros and leaves a 40,004-euro fine standing, The Digital Law reports.
Commercial agents who were employees
The file began with an infringement report dated 26 December 2014. The inspectorate concluded that insurance agents, telemarketing teams and door-to-door salespeople, linked to the insurer through standard commercial contracts, were in reality employees: the company controlled their working day, schedule and productivity, management authorised their holidays and they received a fixed amount not recorded in the contract plus a commission per policy.
That single inspection produced two reports. The challenged one recorded three very serious infringements of article 23.1 a) LISOS, one per unemployment-benefit recipient employed without prior social security registration. The second recorded 28 serious infringements of article 22.2, one per unregistered worker. The first alone did not reach the five affected workers that trigger the top surcharge band; combined, they comfortably did.
The Andalusian contrast that failed
The insurer reached the Supreme Court with a contrast judgment from the Seville chamber of the Andalusian High Court, 3412/2018 of 28 November, where the surcharge was cut to 40 per cent because the proven facts did not record whether the second sanction had become final. Before that, Social Court number 2 of Jaén had dismissed the claim on 31 January 2023 and the Granada chamber confirmed it in judgment 140/2024 of 27 June.
The chamber, with Judge Juan Martínez Moya as rapporteur and presided by Concepción Rosario Ureste García, rejects the contrast argument. Article 40.1, it recalls, is addressed primarily to the inspectorate, because it governs the sanction proposal rather than its imposition, so the finality of the parallel report does not condition the count. A literal and purposive reading of the provision allows adding all those affected by a single material inspection, even if several reports result. Here there was, the chamber writes, unity of investigation.
The judgment rejects in sequence the principles invoked by the company: no breach of the legality principle of article 25.1 of the Constitution, because the law fixes the increase for five or more affected workers in advance; no breach of legal certainty, since the number of workers is an objective datum predetermined by statute; and in dubio pro reo belongs to evidence, not statutory interpretation. The company was also ordered to pay 1,500 euros in costs and lost its appeal deposit.
A compliance lesson on false self-employment
The doctrine arrives with a reminder of the underlying rule: article 16 of Royal Decree 928/1998 requires infringements of the same subject matter detected in one inspection to be accumulated in a single report, with limited exceptions, so splitting reports does not benefit the sanctioned party. For companies the reading is direct: one inspection visit can trigger the top band even if infringements are spread across separate documents.
Source: The Digital Law (30 October 2026).
Related links
Fuentes
- thedigitallaw.com. Accessed 1 November 2026.
The specific data in this article come from the official sources cited.
