The five-day notice to change the working day for workers is non-negotiable
The ruling annuls an article of the Renfe Convention that reduced them to 48 hours.
The five-day period available to the company to pre-notify certain employees of the inclusion of changes in their working hours for justified reasons cannot be reduced by negotiation in the collective agreement with the representation of the workers.
This is determined by the Supreme Court, in a decision of December 11, 2019, in which it annuls an article of the Renfe agreement, whereby this period of notice had been reduced to only the 48 hours prior to the modification of the day Work of train drivers.
On the contrary, the sentence does admit that a reduction of the percentage of the hours that the company can have to start irregular days in situations of need.
The company can distribute irregularly up to 10% of the annual workday without negotiating.
The labor reform of 2011 established that the company can distribute irregularly up to 10% of the annual workday without the need for agreement with the representation of the workers. Article 34.2 of the Workers’ Statute (ET) regulates this reduction of the annual working day.
The rapporteur, Judge Blasco Pellicer, reasons that Article 34.2 of the ET recognizes, in broad terms, the possibility that collective autonomy establishes a system of irregular distribution of working time, provided that such regulation respects the applicable annual working day, minimum weekly and daily breaks and the worker is notified five days in advance of the day and time of the work benefit resulting from irregular distribution.
The rapporteur reasons that “in our judgment of the Social Chamber of April 16, 2014, the same does not happen in relation to the period of notice because, in a paragraph different from that same statutory provision, together with the guarantee of daily rest and weekly, the five-day notice guarantee is established, and that period, which, extending it, could also have been improved, cannot be made worse, as the agreement does, reducing it up to 48 hours. “
It also explains in the judgment that the legal provision constitutes “a provision of necessary relative law insofar as it contemplates that the worker must know with a minimum notice of five days the day and time of the resulting benefit. And such requirement does not apply, only , to the irregular distribution that article 34.2 of the ET has foreseen that the employer can use, when there is no conventional forecast or company agreement in the matter “.
Therefore, Blasco Pellicer concludes that the need for the five-day notice that the company has to carry out, as well as the respect for the minimum periods of daily and weekly rest of the workers, is imposed on any irregular distribution of the day regardless.