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In February 1998, the UGT trade union confederation signed the second general collective agreement for the Spanish construction sector, over three months after it was signed by the CC.OO union confederation and the CNC employers' organisation, thus ending the bargaining deadlock in the industry.
In October 1997 ,a crisis arose between the construction sector federations of the CC.OO and UGT trade union confederations (ES9711131F). UGT called a general strike in the sector that was not supported by CC.OO, which independently signed the "second general agreement for the construction sector" (Segundo Convenio General de la Construcción) with the industry's employers' associations.
The difference of opinion was mainly over the different strategies adopted by the two trade unions for dealing with the high accident rate in the sector (ES9710126F). CC.OO thought that it was better to return to collective bargaining and maintain discussions at other levels, with a commitment to include the decisions reached in the sectoral agreement at a later date. UGT, on the other hand, protested against the repeated non-implementation of the regulations on health and safety at work and demanded the incorporation of a specific regulation on this topic into the construction agreement.
Finally, after three months of intensive negotiations, UGT, CC.OO and the National Confederation of the Construction Sector (Confederación Nacional de la Construcción, CNC) signed a specific agreement on health and safety at work which defines an action plan to promote the implementation of the Law on Prevention of Labour Risks (Ley de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales,LPRL) in the construction sector. This agreement was annexed to the general construction sector agreement, which was finally signed by UGT in February 1998.
The construction agreement's new annex on health and safety at work provides that the Labour Foundation of the Construction Sector (Fundación Laboral de la Construcción, FLC) will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the LPRL in the industry. The main instruments for fighting the high industrial accident rate, defined in an action plan, are information and training. Also, the agreement establishes a new formula for ensuring the presence of safety delegates in companies. In a sector with a high turnover of workers with contracts linked to specific sites and who change company several times a year, it is very difficult to guarantee the presence of safety delegates in companies. The solution reached amongst the signatories to the agreement consists in creating a specific joint body inside the FLC for all those companies without safety delegates. This agreement makes possible the appointment of safety delegates from outside companies.
It has therefore been possible to break the deadlock on collective bargaining in the sector. The signing of the construction sector agreement by UGT will make it fully effective. That is, companies and workers need no longer expressly state their compliance with the agreement for it to apply, and provincial agreements may now be fully extended to a regional level.