The Social Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has upheld a ruling that requires the multinational company owned by the Entrecanales family to pay a hefty sum for attempting to apply a "general cleaning" collective bargaining agreement to a worker who, in reality, should be governed by the more generous Hospitality Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The judge essentially said: If you want your employees to maintain the pristine condition of a luxury hotel, don't try to pay them as if they were sweeping a warehouse in an industrial park. Acciona has learned the hard way that, in the Canary Islands' service sector, the hospitality collective agreement is a "combination plate" that's not so easy to get out of.
The court has been ruthless. Acciona must pay its employee €15.449,01 in back pay accumulated between 2017 and 2023. To make matters worse, the company loses the deposit and the funds allocated for the appeal and receives an additional €800 in legal costs for the employee's lawyer.
The name gives you away: Acciona's defense swore up and down that the thalassotherapy center was an "independent establishment" separate from the hotel. The judges, with irrefutable logic, pointed out that the very name of the complex, Resort & Thalasso, integrates the activity as something "inherent." If you sell it as an exclusive whole in the brochure, you can't claim it's a "separate shop" before the judge.
Acciona tried to convince the court that the worker's tasks were "specialized cleaning" and not typical of the hospitality industry. However, the court reminded them that the other employees in the area (receptionists, massage therapists, etc.) were paid according to the hospitality collective agreement. Why should the person who cleans the mud in the spa be paid less than the one who applies it? The company insisted that the hotel and the spa have different activity codes (CNAE). The court responded that codes don't define reality: the "keystone" of the entire business is accommodation, and the spa is just one more piece of the hotel machine.
The worker's "unskilled" duties included gems like "cleaning salt from the walls of the flotation pool," "scraping pools," taking inventories, and sending people to be washed curtains. A range of tasks that the court considered perfectly within the scope of Level V Hospitality for a five-star hotel.
GARA HERNÁNDEZ
