Spain: courts limit application of labor reform and strengthen collective agreements being renegotiated

A series of court rulings acknowledged the validity of collective agreements, even after their official deadline, waiting for the next collective agreement to be signed.  The judges are going against the spirit of the 2012 labor reform and give unions satisfaction against employers’ organizations that try to get a clean slate in terms of collective agreements by terminating obsolete deals.  The last court ruling in this sense, rendered on January 31, confirms the extended validity of the temporary work agencies’ (TWA) collective agreement until the next deal is signed.  However, this action is limited to agreements with a clause extending validity until the next agreement.
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The attempts by some employers’ organizations to get rid of existing collective agreements seem to be coming up against the National Assembly’s marked doctrine. On July 23, 2013, it confirmed the extended validity of the pilots’ collective agreement at Air Nostrum, judging that the collective agreement itself provided that it was supposed to be valid until the next agreement. Since then, a series of rulings have come to the same conclusion and confirmed the automatic extension of the collecti

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