WORKERS' STATUTE
| SPAIN |
| ESTATUTO DE LOS TRABAJADORES (ET) WORKERS' STATUTE |
Law passed on March 10, 1980, in accordance with the mandate laid down in Article 35.2 of the Spanish Constitution. It fundamentally altered Spanish labour legislation to suit the political and socio-economic situation which emerged in the 1970s. Except in strictly trade union matters, it is now the centrepiece of Spanish labour law. It differs from the Italian Workers' Statute of 1970, from which it took its name, in that it concerns the central aspects of the employment relationship, workers' participation and generally applicable collective bargaining. Compared with earlier Spanish labour legislation, it not only updated the industrial relations system but also made the regulations governing the contract of employment, mobility and termination of the contract of employment more flexible; permanently established workforce representatives as a means of workers' participation; and consolidated the status of collective agreements, as opposed to Labour Ordinances , as the principal source of industry-wide and occupational provisions. The Workers' Statute has been amended several times (1983, 1984 and, above all, 1994, the year of the labour legislation reform ), usually to continue adapting labour regulations to changes in the production system and to strengthen the position of the most representative trade unions in the Spanish industrial relations system.
Please note: the European industrial relations glossaries were compiled between 1991 and 2003 and are not updated. For current material see the European industrial relations dictionary.