EQUALITY PLAN: THE ENTIRE WORKFORCE MUST BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT, NOT INDIVIDUAL WORKPLACES
An equality plan is a positive action instrument designed to achieve genuine equality between men and women within the company. This means that legislation does not permit the drawing up of a separate equality plan for each workplace. The aim of the law is to ensure real equality across the company as a whole, so creating individual equality plans on a workplace-by-workplace basis would defeat that purpose.
It is, however, possible to implement specific measures at each workplace and to agree different actions with employee representatives at each site. These individual, localised measures must nonetheless sit within — and be coordinated under — a single equality plan covering the entire company.
Here you will find a link explaining how to draw up an Equality Plan.
Written by Josep Conesa
Employment and insolvency lawyer
How to negotiate an equality plan with multiple employee representative bodies
A procedural defect in the negotiation of an equality plan renders it null and void.
The key question is who should negotiate the equality plan when a company has several workplaces and therefore multiple employee representatives, organised under different forms of representation (a works council at one site, a staff delegate at another, and so on).
In some cases, all representative bodies will need to be convened. In others, it may be possible to establish an inter-site committee (comité intercentros), the constitution of which is provided for in the Workers' Statute, Article 63. That provision states that such a committee — comprising no more than thirteen members, appointed from among the members of the individual workplace committees — may only be established and governed by way of a collective bargaining agreement.
The composition of the inter-centre committee must reflect the proportional representation of trade unions based on the overall electoral results, and such inter-centre committees may only exercise the functions expressly granted in the collective bargaining agreement under which their establishment was agreed.
It is therefore worth considering the possibility of creating a company collective bargaining agreement that improves upon the conditions of the sector-wide collective bargaining agreement.
Find out here how to manage trade union elections in your company
SPECIALIST LAWYER IN COMPANY collective bargaining agreementS
Or ask us for assistance with negotiating a collective bargaining agreement for your company:
How to implement an equality plan in your company
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