Carrying out a collective agreement involves a negotiation between parties with the aim that, thanks to this, better working conditions are achieved for the workers of a company. But what can stand out above those established by state or regional authorities? As of 2012, the own collective agreements .
All these types of documents are supervised by the Workers’ Statute so that there is no negligence in their development or in the standards stipulated for the company’s staff. That is why the agreement gets great support from the administration and from other companies in the sector.
What is your own collective agreement?
The agreements are those documents, negotiated by a representative of the workers and the employer , that establish a series of conditions and rules for the former within a company.
They regulate such important elements as the salary of the different sections of the workforce, vacations, days off, the length of the working day, overtime, performance, and everything that directly influences the situation of the operators.
These can be differentiated according to certain factors : the function, the territory, for particular reasons, or forms of approval. Within the first, we can find company agreements, or own collective agreements; agreements within a company to specifically regulate the situation of its workers.
When a company creates its own agreement, it ceases to operate under the sectoral level (regional or state), since it is understood that the agreed points are better adapted to the culture and characteristics of the company.
Own collective agreements in the legislative framework
The collective bargaining are continually changing ; why? Well, because the world of work does so, and they must adapt to it in the most optimal way possible. If the jobs change, the conditions attached to them do too.
Among the most important, and the one that concerns us in the subject we are developing, we highlight Law 3/2012 of July 6 , on urgent measures for the reform of the labor market, in which a series of modifications were introduced in the Chapter I of Title III of the Workers’ Statute.
In these changes, it was advocated to adapt working conditions to the new realities of companies, thus establishing the prevalence of the own or company collective agreement over the sectoral collective agreement.
In this way, company negotiations could modify certain aspects of their workforce related to salary, overtime, hours or their own professional classifications, and many others, over those established in the sectorial scope.
However, although all these variations prevailed over the state or regional ones, there was a common ruler that could not be ignored: the Workers’ Statute .
Negotiating parties of their own collective agreement
When negotiating a company’s own collective agreement, we must take into account which parties should sit down to seek favorable conditions for the workers’ situation.
We would be talking about two negotiators: on the one hand, the employer or representative of the entity and, on the other, a union representation of up to a maximum of thirteen people. Those companies whose workers do not have the latter, will have to host a vote to democratically elect, by the staff, a negotiating committee.
Requirements to negotiate a company collective agreement
There are a series of requirements that the company must meet when negotiating its own collective agreement, as these are still subject to state regulations for this type of document. Therefore, we are going to list those that must be taken into account:
Number of employees
Before starting the negotiation of agreements for your company, you should know that you have to have a minimum of 6 workers to be able to carry it out. This is the same number of people required to vote for a union representative, and is thus established according to its regulation.
Negotiation process
The dialogue to write your own collective agreement has to be carried out through a negotiation process between each of the parties. This will allow legal deadlines to be established, the constitution of the table to be valid, and, later, this may be authorized by the competent labor authority.
Negotiating parties
As we have already mentioned previously, the table must be made up of two parts: the employer or his spokesperson, and a representative of the workers (it can be a union made up of up to thirteen people). In this way, there will be no doubt that both will seek what is most beneficial to themselves, and the agreement will have good terms.
Agreements must be in writing
Once an agreement has been reached between the two parties, this must be put in writing in a document, which will be sent to the competent Labor Authority to carry out a check on it and be approved.
Registration and publication
Finally, the company collective agreement will be registered and published for the knowledge of all interested parties.
What are the main advantages of your own collective agreement?
Carrying out the negotiation of our own collective agreement for our company involves a lot of work and effort, but at the same time a resource that can provide us with a large number of benefits . Next, we are going to mention some of them:
- Establish its own remuneration policy : Thanks to this type of agreement, our company can apply salary regulations according to productivity or supplements that they consider necessary according to their criteria.
- Hierarchy of professional groups : The company may establish different groups of workers according to the type of functions they perform and thus establish a hierarchy among them.
- Regulation of the working day in your opinion : Always following the rules of the Workers’ Statute, you can regulate the working hours of the staff depending on their work or production needs. At this point there are schedules, breaks and vacations.
- Work-life balance : More and more, companies are following certain work strategies for work-life balance, such as work.
- Different types of hiring and scholarships .
- Disciplinary mechanisms and codes of conduct : Depending on the reality and direction a company takes, there will be certain forms or codes of conduct that workers must follow.
- Implement training policies : It is an option available to all companies to carry out training policies for the workforce so that they continue to learn and advance in their employment.
- Period of validity of the contract : The company will be able to control the period of duration or the time that this type of collective agreement will be in force.
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