The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has ratified the ruling that sided with 54 chambermaids from the Hesperia Lanzarote Hotel, who went to court when the company decided to outsource the cleaning service in 2013. Thus, the new ruling rejects the appeals filed by Grupo Constant Servicios Empresariales and Gesgrup Siete Outsourcing and again sides with Comisiones Obreras, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the workers.
The ruling that has now been confirmed was issued last May by the Social Court Number 1 of Arrecife, which declared "the right of the workers who clean rooms and common areas of the Hesperia Lanzarote hotel to have the provincial hotel industry agreement of Las Palmas applied to them." This had stopped happening when the employees who provided that service were dismissed and rehired through an external company that applied its own agreement, with more precarious conditions.
The situation was denounced by Comisiones Obreras, which states that this practice has spread throughout the archipelago, so it highlights the importance of this judicial ruling that has now been confirmed. As they explained then, this hotel chain was "the one that initiated the outsourcing as a pilot test in Lanzarote", although later other hotels followed the same steps on the island and in the rest of the Canary Islands. In fact, this same Tuesday, the union denounced that the Hotel Be Live Experience Lanzarote has also just communicated to the workers "the unilateral decision to subrogate and outsource the floors department", so they have already announced a protest rally at the doors of the establishment on December 2.
The hotel backtracked before the ruling was issued
In the case of the Hesperia Hotel, the company already backtracked just before the first ruling was issued. "The hotel re-subrogated all the chambermaids. They have returned to the parent company and Grupo Constant has disappeared from Lanzarote," said the representative of the Federation of Services of CCOO on the island, Vanesa Frahíja, last May.
Thus, when the ruling arrived it had no practical consequences, although according to the union it has served "to set a precedent" throughout the Canary Islands. Perhaps for this reason, the one who appealed the first ruling was not the hotel, but the company that had been subcontracted and also the one responsible for the agreement they were applying, Gesgrup Siete Outsourcing SL. However, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has rejected their arguments
On the one hand, both companies argued that the first ruling had not adequately reasoned why the Gesgrup agreement could not be applied, since it referred to the reasoning of another previous ruling. To this, the TSJC responds that precisely in that ruling it was pointed out "in detail" that the provincial hotel industry agreement establishes in its articles that "it will affect the companies contracted to provide services in establishments subject to the functional scope of the agreement", so it is not possible to fail to comply with it and resort to another particular one.
Regarding the other claim, they intended to correct one of the facts considered proven in the first ruling, which referred to this same aspect. Specifically, they intended to add that the workers "are subject to the current provincial collective agreement of the company Gesgrup Siete Outsourcing SL.".
"It is clear that the reason cannot prosper, for the simple reason that the text proposed by the party is precisely one of the options to be accepted in the normative controversy about which agreement is applicable. It is a legal question, not a fact, and therefore requires an interpretation, so that the interested review could hardly prosper", responds the Court, which dismisses the appeal and imposes on the companies the payment of the costs generated.
