According to the administrators, this represents a loss of 39,420 hours per year

Inalsa employees work 270 hours less per year than stipulated in their agreement

The collective agreement of Inalsa establishes that each employee of the public water company must work 1,576 hours per year (35 hours per week), but, according to the bankruptcy administrators, that schedule is ...

August 10 2011 (01:34 WEST)
Inalsa employees work 270 hours less per year than stipulated in their agreement
Inalsa employees work 270 hours less per year than stipulated in their agreement

The collective agreement of Inalsa establishes that each employee of the public water company must work 1,576 hours per year (35 hours per week) but, according to the bankruptcy administrators, that schedule is far from being met. According to a document they have sent to the Mercantile Court Number 1 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, each worker dedicates about 270 hours less per year than contemplated in the agreement. That is, 17 percent less than they should work.

Multiplied by the 146 employees that the company currently has, Inalsa ends up being owed about 39,420 hours of work each year. That is, the equivalent to the work of another 25 employees, according to the bankruptcy administrators. But the most paradoxical thing is that, in addition, the company spends hundreds of thousands of euros paying overtime. In 2010 alone, the expense for this concept amounted to 267,324 euros.

On this point, they assure that there are workers who, working 1,400 hours per year (even counting the half-hour daily break as work), have ended up charging 200 overtime hours.

Therefore, the bankruptcy administrators want to make substantial changes in the working conditions of Inalsa workers. They do not even intend to change the collective agreement (which is already much more advantageous than that of most companies), but rather modify the working hours and, above all, demand effective compliance with the hours contemplated in that agreement. The administrators maintain that "the practice that Inalsa has been developing, whose origin is unknown, radically contravenes each of the essential aspects" of the current agreement.

Schedules that don't add up

To begin with, the administrators maintain that the "schedules" of all departments, in which the shifts and schedules are established, contemplate about 120 annual hours less than each employee should fulfill, which are 1,575 per year. In addition, the three days of personal matters to which they are entitled per year are counted as "effective working days"; and they enjoy December 24th and 31st as free days, as long as they are not on duty, and they do not recover those hours later, despite the fact that the agreement establishes that they should.

The other 110 hours that the workers do not comply with, according to the bankruptcy administrators, arise from the "sandwich half hour", multiplied by the 220 working days they have per year. On this point, the agreement reflects that the working day is 35 hours per week and establishes that half-hour break for lunch, but does not specify that those 30 minutes can be counted as "effective working hours".

That is to say, according to the administrators, one thing is that they can make that stop, and another is that they count that time within their working day. To support this point, they cite several judicial sentences dictated in Spain on this same issue, in which it is concluded that this break cannot be computed as working time, unless the labor agreement expressly indicates it. And they assure that this is not the case.

For that reason, they intend that from now on that half hour not be computed as working time, and to modify the schedules and schedules of the workers. But in addition, they also want to introduce a fundamental change in the system with which they have been operating with respect to the hours that the worker "owes" to the company.

According to the agreement, the hours that are not included in the work schedule must be paid "within the calendar year", to cover the needs of the company, when substitutions have to be made due to illness, permits or any cause "of force majeure". However, when employees perform those hours, they are counted double, "without there being documentary evidence to justify such a peculiar form of interpretation of the conventional norm", according to the administrators.

For that reason, they also propose that from now on, "the hours that are missing to reach the 1,575 hours of annual work be counted without any surcharge, for the same value".

Objectives

All these proposed measures will now have to be analyzed by the judge in charge of the bankruptcy process, who could decide to impose them, "in the event that an agreement is not reached with the representatives of the workers", according to the administrators.

With them, they intend to "improve the negative situation of the company, through a more adequate organization of its resources, which contributes to future viability and, consequently, to the maintenance of jobs", as well as the reduction of overtime payments, the extension of the time of provision of services to the public and the increase in the productivity of the staff.

RELATED NEWS

[Everyone on vacation when the demand for water increases->57692]

[A cost of more than 44 euros per hour worked->57693]

Most read