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In November 1997, La Caixa - a prominent Spanish savings bank - signed an agreement with the trade unions to promote the creation of permanent jobs. This agreement is a model that will be followed in five other banks with which the CC.OO trade union is negotiating similar terms.
An agreement concluded in November 1997 at the La Caixa savings bank, promoted initially by the CC.OO trade union confederation, lays down - amongst other provisions - that 800 workers who have an apprenticeship contract for over 18 months will be given permanent contracts. The agreement was later accepted by the other trade union organisations represented in the bank - the Savings Union of Caixa de Pensions de Barcelona (Sindicat d'Estalvi de la Caixa de Pensions de Barcelona, SECB), the UGT confederation, the Independent Trade Union of the Balearic Islands (Sindicat Independent de Balears, SIB) and the Savings Federation of Catalonia (Federació d'Estalvi de Catalunya, FEC). The remaining apprentices will obtain permanent contracts when they reach the threshold of 18 months' service, so that 95% of them will have permanent contracts by 1 June 1998. From the moment that they obtain a permanent contract, these workers will be governed by the sector's collective agreement and the labour regulations of La Caixa. Also, the time that they have worked as apprentices will be included for the purposes of calculating length of service.
Furthermore, the agreement establishes the employment contract conditions that will be applied to deal with the planned expansion of the bank over the next three years. The new contracts will be of the "contract of a duration determined by circumstances of production" type, for which the maximum duration of a temporary contract will be one year. After one year, La Caixa has agreed to grant permanent contracts to at least 80% of the workers contracted for a specific period. As in the case of the apprentices, these workers will be governed by the bank's internal labour regulations and the collective agreement for the sector. Again, the time worked on temporary contracts will be counted for the purposes of calculating length of service. Over 700 workers are expected to be given contracts of this type in 1998.
The trade unions that signed the agreement view it very favourably because it marks an important advance in the creation of permanent and high-quality jobs. For the banking federation of CC.OO, the priorities for collective bargaining in the sector are the creation of secure jobs and the regulation of working hours. These two topics are intimately related because, according to CC.OO, job creation in the banking sector involves a greater control of working time and more effective compliance with the working hours laid down in the agreement. According to a study carried out by this union, banking staff are working a total of 23.04 million hours in excess of the working time laid down in the agreements. Consequently, the suppression of 70% of overtime would permit the creation of 9,352 jobs, thus increasing the number of workers in the sector by 7%.
The basic problem is therefore how to convert this overtime into secure jobs. According to CC.OO, this must be approached through company-by-company negotiations so that the temporary workers who move from bank to bank and never manage to join the workforce of the company will obtain permanent posts. CC.OO is currently negotiating similar agreements to that of La Caixa with five other banks: Banco de Santander, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, Caja Madrid, Monte de Sevilla and Unicaja.