El cumplimiento por España de los artículos 2 y 3 del protocolo adicional de 1988 a la Carta Social Europea

  1. Jesús Martínez Girón 1
  1. 1 Universidade da Coruña
    info

    Universidade da Coruña

    La Coruña, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01qckj285

Journal:
Revista del Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social: Revista del Ministerio de Trabajo, Migraciones y Seguridad Social

ISSN: 2254-3295

Year of publication: 2018

Issue Title: La Carta Social Europea

Issue: 137

Pages: 303-328

Type: Article

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More publications in: Revista del Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social: Revista del Ministerio de Trabajo, Migraciones y Seguridad Social

Abstract

Articles 2 and 3 of the Additional Protocol of 1988 to the European Social Charter deal with the right to information and consultation and the right to take part in the determination and improvement of working conditions and the working environment, respectively. These two precepts are not part of the so-called «hard core» of the Charter (only «articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 16, 19 and 20» of Part I of the revised version of the European Social Charter belong to it), so a partial ratification of it would theoretically be admissible as long as it does not include the two specific precepts to which this article refers, although Spain openly ratified the content of the Additional Protocol of 1988. They were incorporated into the Spanish legal system, following the ratification of the Protocol on 23 February 2000. The materials that the European Committee of Social Rights takes into account to calibrate compliance by the States are, on the one hand, the Annex to the protocol, the Explanatory Report on the Protocol itself and the Digest of Jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights (which needs to be updated urgently because of its usefulness); and on the other hand, Directive 2002/14 / EC, on the general framework regarding information and consultation of workers, and the case law of the Luxembourg Court interpreting this Directive (in particular, the case Confédération Générale du Travail, 2007, Case C-385/05). There are two precepts of the Protocol whose compliance is examined jointly by the European Committee of Social Rights; this is not strange because they have common infrastructural elements (in particular, their references to «representatives of workers», «within the company» and the possibility that this type of representatives are excluded in small companies), although its nature of precepts on generic rights causes the existence of peculiar relations with other precepts of the European Social Charter, related to more specific rights, such as its article 3 (it is jurisprudence of the European Committee of Social Rights –on the basis that «the right of workers’ representatives to consultation at company level on matters of health and safety in the workplace is likewise dealt with in article 3»– that one «for those States that have accepted articles 3 and 22, this issue is examined only under article 22», the latter being precisely the case of Spain) or article 28 (in which the reference to the rights regulated by article 2 of the Protocol is even explicit, since the precept is labelled as «the right to information and consultation in procedures of collective dismissal», having to solve the relations between them by giving priority to the specific norm over the generic one). Regarding Spain, the only way available to the European Committee of Social Rights to gauge compliance with these two precepts is the examination of government reports (or «traditional» control procedure), but not that of the procedure for the examination of collective complaints, given that Spain has not ratified either the Additional Protocol of 1995 or the revised version of the European Social Charter. In this way, with respect to article 2 of the Protocol, the European Committee of Social Rights has prepared and published five successive «Conclusions», all of which comply with the Protocol or are in accordance with it, although two of them are «pure» compliance (made public in 2005 and 2007), and the remaining three are «conditioned» to the compliance by Spain with the information requirement made by the Committee (made public in 2004, 2010 and 2012). Regarding article 3, the balance of Spain is even better, since out of the five «Conclusions» corresponding to it, three are «pure» compliance (made public in 2005, 2007 and 2010) and the other two «conditioned» compliance (made public in 2004 and 2012). For the reference period 2013-2016, it seems reasonable to predict that the «Conclusions» corresponding to the compliance by Spain of both precepts, which will be published in January 2019, will not be of «pure» compliance. This is due to the fact that our Government implicitly mentions the economic crisis in its latest compliance report, as far as it is eventually the cause of the clear cuts of labour rights («austerity») that have occurred throughout a large part of the reference period covered by it, because –as it has already been highlighted doctrinally among us– the European Committee of Social Rights has been strongly confirming the validity of the «principle of non-regression» of the level of protection guaranteed by the Charter, even in the face of very dramatic events of fact (for example, labour cuts and all kinds of cuts in Greece, after its bailout). Furthermore, with regard to article 2, there is no answer to the European Committee of Social Rights request about information on compliance with the Spanish legislation with the minimum thresholds indicated by Directive 2002/14 / EC, which predictably ensures that the European Committee of Social Rights cease to assign to Spain a «pure» conclusion of compliance with such article 2. In relation to article 3 of the Protocol, the European Committee of Social Rights in its «Conclusions XX-3 - Spain» raised three specific questions of which there is only one complete answer to the first of them in this report of the Spanish Government. It can convincingly be concluded that nothing is clarified on the second question (the elimination and reduction of social action funds of public employees, as of 2012) –which has to be qualified as a breach–, only remembering the third (relating to social and socio-cultural services and facilities in the company) that the National Institute of Health and Safety at Work, through the National Observatory of working conditions, has published the 2015 national survey on working conditions, whose point 6, devoted to the «activity of prevention and participation», contains an analysis of the level of formal participation and involvement of workers, and the evolution with reference to 2010, referring to the website where this statistical information can be found.

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Funding information

Trabajo realizado al amparo del proyecto estatal de investigación DER2016-75741-P, otorgado por el Ministerio de Economía, industria y Competitividad.

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