The Supreme Court requires that the working day record include sufficient data to facilitate the control of the unions

He Supreme Court has established in a ruling that the day records Most companies must collect sufficient data, such as the employee’s identity or place of work, so that the works council can carry out its control work effectively and detect abuses or non-compliance in detail. The Social Judges declare final the ruling of the National Court that, in the case of BBVAendorsed that this information was part of the working hours record and eliminated the requirement that overtime hours be subsequently authorized by a superior, although this last aspect was not appealed to the Supreme Court by either the bank or the unions.

The lawsuit began in the National Court when the CGT union denounced that the bank’s working hours registration system failed to comply with the Banking Agreement, the agreements and even the Workers’ Statute. They requested that the information from the workday record be traceable, that it also capture ineffective work breaksthat overtime was not subject to subsequent authorization from a superior and that, finally, the record included data such as the employee’s identity and place of work.

The CGT union denounced that the registration of working hours prevented, in practice, BBVA workers from requesting approval of overtime. In November 2021 alone, according to the lawsuit, the bank’s workers worked 263,000 overtime hours and only 1.65% has been requested to be computed. “It is neither objective nor reliable,” the union denounced, and not having access to workers’ data made it impossible to detect abuses or irregularities.

The National Court, in a ruling that has now been confirmed by the Supreme Court, upheld two of the union’s claims. On the one hand, it forced BBVA to eliminate the requirement that overtime, to be considered as such, had to be subsequently approved by a superior. That, according to the judges, reduced the “credibility” of the day record. That first ruling also forced the bank to record data such as the identity and the province and population of each worker. Not providing this data to the works council, said the National Court, limited the “monitoring and control functions” of the workers’ representation.

The case reached the Supreme Court after both the union and BBVA appealed. The bank did not question the part of the ruling that prohibited submitting the authorization of overtime after the fact by a superior, but it did question the obligation to provide data such as the name and surname of each worker in the registry to the works council. The judges, in the ruling to which elDiario.es has had access, explain that including these details does not violate data protection regulations and also remember the committee’s duty not to use them for anything other than controlling the workers’ work hours. employees.

“Complies with the criteria for the transfer of pertinent personal data, minimum proportionate and necessary for the fulfillment of the legal function of the legal representation of workers, in its task of monitoring and controlling health and safety conditions at work,” explains the Supreme Court. The bank had to date claimed that giving these details violated regulations and violated the privacy of the workers. The Court also rejects the entity’s attempt to modify the proven facts about how it controls the excess hours of its workers.

The judges also reject the appeal in which the union asked the Supreme Court to go further than the National Court and require the bank to provide “traceable” information. For the Supreme Court, the bank’s system for recording work hours “meets the required requirements of traceability, objectivity and reliability.” In contact with elDiario.es, BBVA has limited itself to pointing out that “the bank is analyzing the content and scope of the Supreme Court’s resolution” but that in any case “it will abide by the decisions of the courts on this matter.”

The National Court recalled in this case that in the last five years it has issued half a dozen rulings that have considered it legal, for example, that coffee or cigarette breaks do not count as effective work time, that companies had to authorize overtime or that a work record will not be reliable if it is limited to the worker signing a sheet when entering and leaving the office.