Keys to Changes to the Law on Collective Labor Relations

Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion (MTPE) changed through Supreme Decree No. 014-2022-TR provisions of the Law on Collective Labor Relations. This is a change of 30 articles and the inclusion of 8 articles, which in practice makes it the new rule.

Per Percy Curie, Employment lawyer and partner at Guzmán Napurí & Segura Abogados, change can be organized in three ways.

1. Trade union organization

Kouri said there has been a new change on the issue because he now allows trusted workers to be part of a union. This measure “breaks” what was previously held at the legislative and judicial level. “Several rulings from the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court have confirmed that trusted workers, due to their sensitive nature, cannot participate in trade union organization,” Kouri said. He also pointed out that this new provision “could violate the very nature of the position.”

Another aspect that has been changed is the expansion of the organization at the federation and confederation levels. Curi explained that unions are grouped by context and their volume, like a certain scale: from trade union in a federation and then in a confederation.

“If I, a worker, join a trade union like the group I belong to, or join a federation and then a confederation, I automatically also had protection or considered myself within that group because I was a member of the trade union. Now this will not be necessary. I can apply directly to a confederation even if my union does not participate in that confederation or federation,” he said.

Kouri added that there will be two types of representation before the employer: the leader of the trade union and at the same time the leader of the federation or confederation. “There may even be opposite situations between the position of my leader and the leader of a federation or confederation,” he said.

For a lawyer, this paragraph breaks the essence of what was implemented before the Decree of the Supreme Council No. 014-2022-TR. “They were created for the collective association of trade union organizations, and not for the individual association of each of the workers,” he said.

2. Collective bargaining

Kouri pointed out that some practices that the Department of Labor “developed at the level of internal rules” were elevated to the rank of Supreme Decree. One of these is the obligation of the employer to provide the information that the union needs to file a claim.

“What you do is raise supreme decree administrative rule or the content of said rule, which states that the expansion of information that the employer had to provide corresponds to the last three financial years that the company has,” the lawyer explained.

According to the rule, the union can request information about the economic, social and any other situation that is “relevant”. For Kouri, this gives the union an open letter asking it to request “any information it deems necessary or that is necessary for collective bargaining.”

“If the company does not agree that this information requested by the union is necessary, this can lead to conflict. The trade union may regard this refusal as an unreasonable refusal and lead to a strike,” the specialist said.

3. Impact flexibility

heal He said that the issue of the strike has now been relaxed. First, it was necessary to complete a number of formalities: submit a report indicating the reasons for which the strike was achieved to the administrative body for labor.

“This information had to be evaluated, after which it was determined whether the strike was appropriate or inappropriate, in accordance with the information provided by the organization,” he said.

The modification now makes it more flexible and the labor administration has three days to make a decision. “The most likely that these three days will be short, and strike requests will eventually be approved due to positive silence, that is, due to the lack of time for the administrative body to evaluate and respond to them,” he said.

President Pedro Castillo’s decision to remain silent in the presence of national prosecutor Patricia Benavides is a bad sign for society, said Cesar Bazan Naveda, dean of the Lima Bar Association.