Living and working in Spain

Actors and institutions

Trade unions, employers’ organisations and public institutions play a key role in the governance of the employment relationship, working conditions and industrial relations structures. They are interlocking parts in a multilevel system of governance that includes European, national, sectoral, regional (provincial or local) and company levels. This section looks into the main actors and institutions and their role in Spain.

Public authorities involved in regulating working life

The main ministry dealing with social dialogue and working conditions is the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Social Security and the Employment Departments of the Autonomous Communities. The Ministry plays an important role in fostering tripartite social dialogue. Moreover, these institutions are in charge of registering collective agreements and providing statistical information on aspects related to collective bargaining coverage, negotiated wages, disputes etc. Once a collective agreement has been concluded, the signatory parties must send the collective agreement to the public authority (the Ministry of Labour if it is national and the Employment Departments of the Autonomous Communities if it is regional) within 15 days. Prior to the registration, the public authorities make sure that the content of the agreement is in line with legislation. If the collective agreement goes against legislation, the public authority can challenge it.

The main institution ensuring the enforcement of employees’ rights is the Work Inspection and Social Security body, which does so through the labour inspectorates. Labour inspectorates are in charge of monitoring working conditions, the unions’ relationships and social security duties (registration of workers for social security, contributions paid to social security and so on).

The labour inspectorates are also in charge of monitoring the performance of health and safety regulations. Its functions include, among others, validating and promoting the implementation of the health and safety regulations, assessing companies on how to apply health and safety regulations, elaborating reports concerning work accidents and professional diseases, suggesting penalties to the Labour Administration in case of non-compliance and ordering the stoppage of work in case of dangerous circumstances.

Representativeness

In Spain, the concept of representativeness guarantees an erga omnes representation for both trade unions and employers’ organisations. Thus, it endows the most representative trade unions and employer organisations with the capacity to negotiate agreements on behalf of all workers in the sector or company in which the agreement is negotiated.

The main legal criterion for determining the representativeness of trade unions is based on the workplace election results of workers’ delegates and work councils’ members. Accordingly, the electoral process aiming to choose the employees’ representatives at the workplace is used to measure trade union support. For employers’ organisations, the criterion for determining their representativeness is based on membership.

Through the concept of ‘most representative organisations’, employers’ organisations and trade unions are entitled to conclude multiemployer collective agreements, to have institutional representation (in other words, to be a part of tripartite bodies, to be consulted by the government and to conclude social pacts) and to take part in extrajudicial systems of labour conflict resolution. Moreover, meeting the criterion of legal representativeness is the basis for getting access to public funds.

• Topic: Representativeness

Trade unions

About trade union representation

According to the Organic Law of Trade Union Freedom (1985), all workers can join trade unions except members of the Spanish Forces, judges and public prosecutors.

Trade union density in Spain has remained rather stable since the early 1980s. Even though the lack of reliable data make it difficult to assess it, most estimates point to 15-20% as the density rate in Spain since the early 1980s. Even though it has been subject to cyclical fluctuations, it does not exhibit a clear downward trend, as it does in other EU countries. Since the onset of the crisis, however, trade union density has slightly decreased according to the figures provided by the Working and Living Conditions Survey conducted by the Ministry of Employment (17.4% in 2008 compared to 16.4% in 2010). Unfortunately, the survey has not been conducted since 2010. Since the Great Recession, union density in Spain has exhibited a decline from 18,3% in 2020 down to 13,6% in 2018.

The main criteria for determining union representativeness is the electoral audience, which is determined by the number of delegates and works councils’ representatives obtained in the elections. This, together with the automatic extension of collective agreements explains the low density rates in Spain, as workers have limited incentives to join trade unions.

Trade union membership and trade union density

Main trade union confederations and federations

The most representative unions in Spain are the Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) and the General Workers’ Confederation (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT), which together account for 67.43% of Works’ Councils representatives elected in 2020.

Main trade union confederations and federations

Sources: *CCOO report Afiliación y Representación en 31-12-2015. ** UGT transparency portal: https://www.ugt.es/portal-de-transparencia/C%C3%B3mo%20Somos#1 ***article in ABC newspaper: https://www.abc.es/economia/abci-sindicatos-siguen-sumando-afiliados-tercer-consecutivo-201904302030_noticia.html

In addition to the most representative confederations at national level, there are some smaller confederations, including Trade Union Workers Unity (Unión Sindical Obrera, USO) and General Workers’ Confederation (Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT). Moreover, there are most representative confederations at regional level. These arethe Galician Inter-sectoral Confederation (Confederación Intersectoral Galega, CIG) and Solidarity of Basque Workers (Solidaridad de Trabajadores Vascos, ELA-STV). Finally, the third most important confederation in the public sector is the Independent and Civil Servant Central Trade Union (Confederación Sindical Indepdendiente y de Funcionarios, CSIF).

UGT’s last congress was held in March 2016, and Mr Pepe Álvarez was elected as the new General Secretary (he replaced Mr Cándido Méndez, who had been General Secretary of UGT trade union for 22 years). CCOO’s last congress was held in June 2017, and they named a new General Secretary, Mr Unai Sordo (replacing Mr Ignacio Fernández Toxo, who had spent 9 years in that position).

Since the 1990s, the most important trade unions at national level, UGT and CCOO, have maintained a cooperative relationship and unity of action. They have also maintained their representativeness.

The most important changes relate to the mergers of federations that both trade unions carried out in 2014. CCOO merged the Federation of Textile, Chemical and Related Activities (FITEQA-CCOO) into the Industry Federation (CCOO INDUSTRIA). It also merged the Federation of Commerce, Hotels and Restaurants, Tourism and Gambling (FECOHT-CCOO) with the Federation of Financial Services (COMFIA-CCOO) into the new Federation of Services. Meanwhile, in 2014, UGT merged the Federation of Transport (TCM-UGT) and the Federation of Commerce, Hotels and Restaurants, Catering Trade, Tourism and Gambling (CHTJ-UGT) into the new Federation of Services for Mobility and Consumption (SMC-UGT).

More recently, in May 2016, new federations were created within the UGT structure: Federation of Public Services employees – formed by the previous public services federation (FeSP) and education federation (FEYE) – and FICA,formed by the union of the Federation of Metal and Construction (MCA) and the Federation of Agriculture (Fitag).

By 2020, CCOO has seven sectoral federations (Construction, Teaching, Industry, Pensioneers, Health and Social Services, Citizenship services, Services) whilst UGT has six (FeSP – Public Services; FeSMC – Services, Mobility and Consumption; FICA – Industry, Construction and Agriculture; UJP – Pensioneers; UPA – Agriculture; UPTA – Professionals and Self-employees).

For both unions, the mergers were carried out in order to combat the decline in financial resources from membership fees and public financing.

Employers’ organisations

About employers’ representation

Employers’ organisations do not have a legal text that regulates their rights and obligations, like the trade unions do with the Organic Law of Trade Union Freedom (1985).

The procedures to verify the representativeness of the employers’ organisations are not clearly established. As a matter of fact, there is a lack of official and institutional procedures to check if the employers’ organisations that claim to be representative meet the legal requirements. In addition, there are no official publications of affiliation figures to employers’ organisations. As such, the only figures available are those provided by the employers’ organisations themselves.

The absence of figures on employers’ organisation membership does not mean a lack of legitimacy or social recognition of the most representative associations at national level. In fact, the ‘most representative’ employers’ organisations – the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (CEOE) and the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (CEPYME) – are recognised by the employers, trade unions and government. Moreover, there are no potential competitors that can challenge their status.

In November 2018, Mr. Antonio Garamendi was elected as the new president of CEOE. Mr. Garamendi was the only candidate in the elections and was elected by acclamation. He will replace Mr. Juan Rosell, who waspresident since December 2010. Until the elections, Mr. Garamendi was president of CEPYME, the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises.

Employer organisations – membership and density

*Percentage of employees working in an establishment that is a member of any employers’ organisation that is involved in collective bargaining.

Main employers’ organisations

The Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (CEOE) and the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (CEPYME) are the most representative employers’ organisations. There are no official publications of the affiliation figures of the employers’ organisations, but CEOE claims to represent 2 million companies and 12 million employees through its 225 federations. CEPYME does not provide figures of companies and employees.

Main employers’ organisations and confederations

*Source: CEOE website.
**Source: CEPYME website.

Tripartite and bipartite bodies and concertation

The main tripartite body is the Spanish Social and Economic Council (Consejo Económico y Social). It is a consultative body created in 1991 that submits reports to the government before laws and royal-decrees are enacted. Moreover, it analyses and studies different elements and topics under its own initiative. In most regions, there is a tripartite Social and Economic Council with similar functions and composition to the national one. However, in some regions these bodies ceased their activities due to lack of funding during the Great Recession.

The so-called Industrial Observatories are important tripartite bodies operating at the sectoral level. There are 10 observatories in different industry sectors and in the construction sector. These tripartite bodies were created in 2005 in order to improve and extend the analytical information on the sectors. The aim of the observatories is to foster debate and to identify strengths and weakness in order to promote efficient industrial policies. However, their activity has dramatically decreased since the onset of the crisis, and nowadays they are practically dismantled. Finally, another tripartite body is the National Consultative Commission of Collective Agreements (Comisión Consultiva Nacional de Convenios Colectivos), created by Royal Decree 1362/2012. It is a consultative body for aspects such as proposing and determining the functional scope of collective agreements. It is also involved in monitoring collective agreements, including information, studies, documentation and diffusion of them.

The most important bipartite body is the Interconfederal Service of Mediation and Arbitration (Servicio Interconfederal de Mediación y Arbitraje, SIMA). It is financed entirely by the state and managed autonomously by the social partners. It manages industrial conflicts by offering industrial dispute resolution mechanisms.

In spite of the existence of tripartite and bipartite bodies, social pacts and peak inter-sectoral agreements are not negotiated under any of the existing institutional bodies.

With regard to bipartite agreements, since the mid-1990s peak inter-sectoral agreements for collective bargaining have been signed between the most representative trade unions and employer organizations. These agreements have been signed, with only a short interruption in the crisis in 2012, 2015 and more recently in 2018. Even though these are not mandatory agreements and only provide guidelines on different issues, such as pay increases, they nonetheless provide some degree of coordination and a general framework for collective bargaining.

With the advent of the sovereign debt crisis and the implementation of austerity policies, tripartite social dialogue was discontinued. Only since 2014, with the start of the economic recovery, some tripartite pacts on specific issues have been signed. Tripartite social dialogue seems to have gained momentum in 2018 when agreements on youth employment and decent work were signed.

Main tripartite and bipartite bodies

Workplace-level employee representation

The main bodies for workplace-level representation in the private sector are workers’ delegates and works’ councils. In the public sector, workplace-level representation is done through the so-called ‘Juntas de Personal’.

Workers’ delegates are responsible for representing workers in establishments and workplaces between 11 and 49 employees. There may also be a workers’ delegate in undertakings with 6 to 10 employees, provided that it is a decision reached by the majority of the employees. In undertakings with up to 30 employees there may be one workers’ delegate, and three workers’ delegates in undertakings with between 31 and 49 employees.

Works’ Councils are employee representative bodies in workplaces with a staff of 50 or more workers. In the case of companies with two or more establishments in the same province or bordering municipalities with fewer than 50 employees in each workplace but with 50 or more employees as a whole, a joint workers’ committee may be established (Article 64, TRET).

In addition, workers affiliated to a union can constitute a so-called trade union’s section within the enterprise.

Elections for workers’ delegates and works councils’ members can be called by the most representative trade union organisations (those that have a membership of at least 10% of company representatives or employees in a workplace by majority agreement). Those who call the elections must inform the company and the public labour authorities of their intentions at least one month in advance. In addition, elections may be called at a more general level in one or several functional or territorial areas, subject to the agreement of the most representative trade unions.

According to Spanish legislation, these bodies can also exercise I&C rights and can conclude company collective agreements. In this regard, it is worth noting that a recent regulation (Royal-decree 7/2011) gave priority to the trade union’s sections over work councils in order to conclude company collective agreements, when these trade unions have a majority of seats in the workers’ Committee.

According to the ECS, the percentage of establishments that have any form of employee representation increased from 53% in 2009 to 57% in 2013.

Regulation, composition and competences of the bodies

* According to the Law, the most representative trade unions are those that constitute 10% of workers’ delegates and members of workers’ committees at state level and 15% within the autonomous communities. Similarly, trade unions that have a membership of 10% or more of workers’ delegates and members of workers’ committees in a specific territorial and functional sphere will be considered representative within that scope.