The salary agreement introduces formulas for reducing sick leave and its duration

V Agreement on Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC) which recommends a salary increase of up to 13% in the next three years is already a reality in the absence of an official yes CC.OO., which will materialize today. The CEO He took over from the union and gave the go-ahead for the pay pact shortly after midday yesterday. This time they did it unanimously and, unlike the labor reform, without a critical voice or complaint. Soon after, the UGT approved, also unanimously, the establishment of the pact an increase of wages of workers covered by the collective agreement of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024 and 2025.; an increase of at least 10% during the period 2023-2025. Furthermore, a review clause is included with an increase of up to an additional 1% at the end of each of those years if inflation exceeds those increases, with effect from January 1 of the following year. In addition, the agreement includes a whole series of measures aimed at improving the working conditions of workers.

More prominence for common

One of the main measures of the document — leaving aside the issue of wages — is to act against the high absenteeism recorded among Spanish workers: every day more than a million people are absent from the workplace. For this reason, the new AENC calls for the “establishment of courses of action” to reduce the number and duration of temporary incapacity (IT) processes arising from common contingencies.

To do this, it will enable mutual companies may conduct diagnostic tests and therapeutic and rehabilitation treatments on sick leave of traumatological origin, the text states. Managements are hereby invited to activate the national and regional tripartite sphere to analyze the causes, frequency and duration of sick leave, as well as to study the impact of the National Health System’s response to IT processes.

This was one of the main demands of businessmen to introduce effective formulas control of absences from workalthough in the end they failed to ensure that mutual societies can also manage sick leave, but at least they can speed up the processes to offer help faster than social security.

public procurement

With the new collective agreement, the Government is also called to amend the current regulations on price revisions in public procurement procedures, which make it impossible to update them “even in extreme situations such as the present”, with an inflationary spiral that significantly increases costs. Workers or companies participating in public procurement cannot again be disobedient to the norm that prevents a de facto revision of prices, and thus wages, the text claims.

partial retirement

Employers and trade unions are also committed to promoting gradual and flexible formulas for agreement retirement to ease the transition from active life to retirement from work and commit to promoting agreement assistance in each of the sectors and companies, depending on their circumstances and their own characteristics. In addition, they call on the executive to fulfill its commitment and convene a table for social dialogue to promote an aid contract and negotiate formulas that combine work and pensions in the last part of working life.

They, on the other hand, advocate the “promotion” of pension plans from the employment relationship in contracts through long-term savings insurance.

temporary

Employment is another matter, since the labor reform adopted at the end of 2021 left certain powers in the hands of collective agreements. So, The unions agreed that due to production circumstances, they would extend the temporary contracts from six months to one year in sectoral agreements, the maximum duration allowed by the new standard.

Another tricky issue was the regulation of employment contracts for an indefinite period. In this sense, it is recommended to regulate the minimum time of these contracts sector by sector, but calls for the creation of an annual list of permanent-discontinuous personnel. Similarly, this agreement does not set a maximum percentage of additional hours for part-time contracts, although it does specify that they cannot exceed 60% of the regular contracted hours nor be less than 30% of them.

digital disconnection

Collective agreements will guarantee the right to digital exclusion of all workers, including those who practice new work modalities, such as remote work or flexible working hours. So remember that they are not obliged to answer calls or electronic mail outside working hours, except in the case of “exceptional circumstances of force majeure”, but does not establish new obligations or restrictions for companies.

Flexible schedules

In the same way, employers and unions consider it “necessary” to adopt work flexibility formulas, for which they prefer the annual calculation of the working day, advocate for flexible time of entering and leaving work and call for the articulation of compensation systems for excess and deficiency.