El País signs agreement on 35-hour week

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Diario El País SA is the first private Spanish company in which an agreement has been reached to introduce the 35-hour working week for all staff. The agreement, signed in April 1999, covers around 800 workers at this media company and is the latest step in progressive working time reductions, which have not been linked to job creation.

Diario El País SA is the largest company in the Spanish press sector, producing the newspaper with the largest circulation in Spain, and is one of the most important companies in PRISA, the country's most powerful media group. It has a workforce of around 800 employees on permanent contracts, with a long trade union tradition (led by CC.OO), which has wide backing from the workers (around 90% participation in workplace elections and 70% attendance at meetings). The characteristics of the parties involved and their economic situation arguably makes it unsurprising that this company is breaking new ground in collective bargaining, having become the first private sector Spanish firm in which an agreement has been reached to introduce the 35-hour working week for all staff (ES9902297F).

An agreement signed at Diario El País SA in April 1999 includes a clause establishing the 35-hour working week for all staff, five hours fewer than the statutory working week laid down in the Workers' Statute. Working hours in this firm have been progressively reduced through collective bargaining over the past few years, and this latest reduction amounts to one hour per week, or 52 hours per year. This is very considerable if it is borne in mind that the average reduction in working hours through collective bargaining throughout the 1990s has been 10 hours a year. Furthermore, the 35-hour week was not the main bone of contention in negotiating the agreement, which focused on pay, an increase in the workforce, changes in occupational gradings and retirement bonuses.

It is significant that this reduction in working hours did not involve a loss of acquired rights for the workers at El País, as has happened in other agreements on working hours in Spain. Over the past few years, the trend has been towards working time reorganisation (ES9903199F), with the introduction of an irregular distribution of working hours calculated on an annual basis - that is, an increase in worker availability in annual terms, involving an increase in the discretionary powers of the management and, in some cases, no control mechanism by the workers. At El País, more flexible working hours had already been negotiated in previous agreements. Working time schedules must result from an agreement between the management and the workers' committee, and any exceptions to the general conditions must be agreed. These conditions are as follows: work schedules are established annually; hours are calculated weekly and may be distributed irregularly but only on a weekly basis; day shifts may not exceed nine hours and night shifts eight hours; workers must have two consecutive days off per week; and there must be a minimum of 12 hours between each shift. So flexible working hours had been achieved in this enterprise before the 35-hour week, without excessive demands on worker availability and with the full participation of worker representatives.

From a trade union perspective, the 35-hour week agreement signed at Diario El País SA as another step forward in the struggle to improve working conditions. It represents an improvement in workers' rights as such and is not linked to the question of employment creation, as is generally the case in current debate about shorter working hours.