The High Court of Justice of the Region of Valencia (TSJCV) has sentenced a company in Alicante, Bonnysa, one of the main tomato producers in Spain, to compensate a union delegate with 3,126 Euro for not providing information on the Employment Regulation File (ERE) that it undertook in 2015.
The ruling, issued in May, overturns an earlier one by the Social Court of Alicante and establishes that the company violated "the fundamental right of trade-union freedom, and specifically, the right to receive information from the company."
The delegate of the General Confederation of Workers (CGT) had asked Bonnysa's management in July 2015 to provide him with information on the list of workers affected by two ERE's, one of them of a temporary nature; the request was made again in February 2016.
In the following months, the company sent him a series of documents informing him that these issues were to be dealt with by the ERE follow-up commission, which already included a representative of the CGT trade union section.
The court of Alicante dismissed the union's suit in July 2016 for that reason, but the Social Chamber of the TSJ has revoked the ruling after concluding that the right to access information by a trade union delegate "is of an individual, autonomous and independent nature."
"The firm is not meeting the request by handing the documentation required by the individual to the company committee, as the individual is not a member of the said committee," clarified the regional court.
Thus, the new sentence, which can be appealed to the Supreme Court, sets a fine of 3,126 Euro in favour of the plaintiff.
Source: EFE
