The Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has issued a ruling that obliges cleaning or multi-service companies that provide their services in hotels or other areas of the hotel industry to apply the sector's collective agreement to their workers.
In a ruling dated last December 30, the TSJC dismisses a lawsuit filed by four companies in the service sector (Secofuert Investigación, Servicon Atlántico, Canarilime and Servicon FTF), which challenged the Collective Agreement for the Hotel Industry Sector of the Province of Las Palmas.
Specifically, in the lawsuit they filed against the Federation of Tourism Businessmen of Las Palmas (FEHT), the Insular Association of Hotel and Apartment Businessmen of Lanzarote (Asolan) and the CCOO and UGT unions, the companies requested that the article of the Agreement be annulled, which establishes that it not only affects and obliges all companies and establishments dedicated to the hotel industry, but "all those companies" that, with the contribution of personnel, perform one or more services in the establishments subject to said agreement.
The plaintiff companies, in order to be able to pay their employees in accordance with their own company agreements, argued that "they are not in the hotel sector" and that, therefore, it was "harmful" to extend "the effects of the Collective Agreement for the Hotel Industry Sector of the Province of Las Palmas to a functional area outside of it, such as cleaning or multi-services".
Principle of constitutional equality
However, the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands considers that "such real and serious damage does not occur". And it is that the Chamber points out that these companies "freely compete to carry out their activity in the hotel industry, being able to decide whether or not to work in said sector (as in any other) freely, without being obliged by any rule". In addition, it points out that "the higher cost is passed on to the contract and is assumed by the main company".
The TSJC also points out that the Collective Agreement for the Hotel Industry Sector of the Province of Las Palmas applies the "principle of constitutional equality" to "avoid that working in the same company and doing the same thing, there are workers with different remunerations".
In this regard, the chamber points out that in the field of Temporary Work Companies as well as in contracts in Public Administrations, legislation has been enacted in recent years to impose the sectoral collective agreement, even when there is a company collective agreement.
Situations "of abuse" and "social dumping"
"Underlying all these behaviors is the application of the principle of constitutional equality; the idea that the rise of multi-service companies increases precariousness in hiring, establishes inequalities and involves situations of abuse, if not fraud, and the need to defend sectoral collective agreements from competition, to the detriment of workers, which implies the applicative priority of the company agreement", he adds.
In this regard, he reflects on whether the harmfulness is not in the company collective agreements "downwards, with salaries close to the SMI, and working hours longer than those of the sectoral agreements, etc., which give rise to a situation of social dumping and which harm the balance achieved in sectoral collective bargaining, through company collective agreements where there is a manifest weakness of the representative structures and races to the bottom are carried out in working conditions, which sometimes present features of abuse of law".
