Spain: all supermarket employees get the right to five free weekends

Supermarket employees will be entitled to at least five weekends off a year, regardless of the fact that their workload is divided over 4, 5 or 6 days a week. The National Court gave satisfaction to the CCOO and UGT unions against the sector's employers' organizations, which claimed that this right was reserved to 6 days a week. (Ref. 120408)

The FECOHT-CCOO and CHTJ-UGT commerce federations called upon the justice,

considering that there was discrimination between the employees and

reminding that the sector’s collective agreement, ratified in September

2009, guaranteed the principle of free weekends to foster work-life balance

and didn’t differentiate between employees.  The two unions denounced the

fact that employers’ representatives a posteriori tried to amend the text

without them knowing it, to introduce a distinction between employees who

work 6 days a week and the others.

The National Court gave unions satisfaction.  The National Court’s ruling

states that the joint committee composed of union and employers’

representatives which ratified the distinction cannot amend the collective

agreement without the UGT and CCOO   it also states that the right to have

five free continuous Saturdays/Sundays a year applies to all employees who

work 4 or 5 days a week.

Conflict over the writing of the 2009 collective agreement.  The sector’s

employers and unions already fought over this many times.  A series of

court rulings against Leroy Merlin, Carrefour and Makro notably led to two

rulings by the supreme court in 2008 providing that businesses had to grant

two consecutive days off a week (see our dispatch No.  080969).

Then, this obligation was at the center of the negotiations for the new

collective agreement, in force since November 2009.  The text ensured 5

free weekends a year in addition to the 21 days of paid annual leave.

However, the FECOHT-CCOO and CHTJ-UGT unions denounced the fact that the

employers’ organization introduced too much deregulation to the work

rhythms to make up for the obligation to comply with compensatory rest (see

our dispatch No.  091043).  FECOHT-CCOO and CHTJ-UGT, which only represent

14 and 13 percent of the workers in the sector, had refused to sign the

collective agreement.

Source: Planet Labor, June 20, 2012, No.  120408 – www.planetlabor.com