AFE asks Barça to back down at the negotiating table

The Spanish Soccer Players Association has issued this Wednesday a release in relation to the situation of the professional soccer players of FC Barcelona. AFE ensures that there are “serious shape defects” in the constitution of the negotiating table because “The players are not represented.” Also, ask the club to back down and start a “dialogue with the group of professional footballers”. Finally, it warns that, if the club carries out the process in the stated terms, “it will entail the more than safe challenge of the measures that are finally adopted, with a high risk of nullity, and the automatic right to compensated termination of the employment contract of the affected workers “.

This is the full AFE statement:

“Regarding the procedure for the substantial modification of working conditions that FC Barcelona has recently initiated, as the union representing the affected footballers (all those who have a professional contract with said club), we want to state the following:

This procedure, in our opinion, suffers from serious formal defects, since a negotiation table has been formed on the measures to be adopted in which the players are not represented, since they have not been voters or eligible in the elections to the Committee. Company of the entity, have not been members of the electoral roll and therefore are not represented by said committee. The failure to comply with the composition of the negotiating table is so serious that the Company Committee itself has informed the club that they do not represent the players. It is our duty to request the club to reverse this process under the current terms and initiate, if it deems it necessary, a dialogue with the professional footballers, following the legal channels established in art. 41 of the Workers' Statute (ET).

Beyond the serious defects of form regarding the composition of the negotiating table, we ask the club to opt for the negotiation of these measures in two differentiated processes. One for workers with an ordinary employment contract. And another for professional athletes subject to a special employment relationship. Only from the particularized analysis of the special idiosyncrasy of a group such as professional footballers can an agreed solution emerge within the framework of this process.

Finally, the club cannot fail to be aware that this process, if carried out in the terms set forth, will entail a more than sure challenge of the measures that are finally adopted, with a high risk of nullity, and the automatic right to indemnified termination of the employment contract of the affected workers, by virtue of the application of article 41 ET itself. We believe that the club must be frank with its members and assume before them that these measures will entail a very significant loss of FC Barcelona's assets.

From AFE we will continue supporting all the professional soccer players of FC Barcelona and all those players who see their labor and union rights attacked “.