The priority of the company agreement brings Spain to the European benchmark

With the aim of collective bargaining being an instrument, and not an obstacle, to adapt working conditions to the economic circumstances of the company, the 2012 labor reform modified three fundamental aspects of collective bargaining.

The company was allowed to have the possibility of picking up the current collective agreement. Priority was given to the collective bargaining agreement against the sector, and finally, the regulation of the regime of ultraactivity of the agreements was modified, limiting the extension of application of the denounced agreements to one year. Until then, even if the agreement had ended, it continued to apply until a new one was negotiated.

This situation, caused in many occasions that the negotiations were eternalized in the time. With the approval of this measure it was intended to approach the German model, where before the end of the term of the agreement, the unions accelerate the preparation and negotiation of a new one. In this way, negotiated conditions can be adapted to the reality of the company, and to the economic circumstances it is going through.

The limitation of ultraactivity, as well as the prevalence of the company agreement on the sector, among other measures, has been and is considered by certain social agents as one of the most pernicious elements of the labor reform of 2012. Hence it is found among the proposals of the new Executive to modify the Statute of the Workers, in order that the sectorial agreement prevails over the one of company, and not to limit the regime of ultractivity. What would cause negotiations between companies and unions to slow down, and that business needs and working conditions could not adapt quickly enough to changing market situations.

With the surroundings

If we look at collective bargaining systems in our countries, we find that there is no uniformity in this regard, but, nevertheless, countries such as (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, Croatia, Germany and other countries) differentiate between sectoral agreements, business agreements and business agreements, adapting in each country to its regulatory standards, the subjects entitled to negotiate both types of pacts, the rules governing the distribution of matters subject to negotiation and the principles that order the relations between agreements and agreement and pacts.

There are other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in which business agreements predominate.

Attending to the first group of countries in which both systems coexist. The predominant collective bargaining follows the German model of a dual nature, in which there are sector agreements and business agreements, but in which bargaining at company level has advanced rapidly causing collective bargaining in the sector have had to reduce their standards in order for affiliated companies to lose competitiveness. The guarantee of economic competitiveness has always been taken into account in German collective bargaining and has been one of the most important benchmarks for both employers and trade unions.

In France, for example, the relationships between the collective agreement, company agreements and the employment contract are precisely regulated. Thus appearing agreements called “competitiveness”, which can regulate working time, remuneration and its composition, the terms and procedures of professional or geographical mobility.

A lot of negotiation

In our country, despite the modification made by the 2012 labor reform, sectoral collective bargaining is very predominant, with the majority of workers subject to provincial sectoral collective agreements, followed by national ones. In much smaller proportion, we find company agreements, carried out by large companies. What causes these agreements to affect a very small number of workers as our productive fabric is constituted by more than 85% of SMEs, the latter being the large ones harmed, seeing their capacity for growth limited by labor regulations.

Our labor legislation remains dense, prolific, confusing and old, too many patches have been put on. The 2012 labor reform meant an advance in legislation inherited from Franco, but it is necessary to adapt it to the new times, to technical and technological progress and to the new realities that we have to live. We have to face the fourth industrial revolution, changes must be made so that there are no winners or losers.

Measures that go against flexibility and that mark a greater rigidity by agreement, regardless of the size of the company, its situation and its possible and necessary organizational changes, are a step back, which can affect the functioning of the labor market and maintenance of certain jobs.

Economy and Labor are faced by the repeal of the labor reform