“According to complaints from workers who have been reporting to Sinttav services, they are being notified about the ‘obligation’ to compensate for all the time they could not work due to power outages with overtime,” declared the union in a statement.
Condemning the legal legitimacy of this demand, Sinttav contends that “under no circumstances” should the blackout “serve as a pretext” for companies to penalize workers and assures that it will “take the necessary measures” with the competent authorities.
“Naturally, in those companies not equipped with alternative solutions, the ‘blackout’ in some cases hindered the full functioning of their activities, but under no circumstances should it serve as a pretext for companies to ‘punish’ workers with the obligation to add extra and free time to the normal work period,” it maintains.
According to the union, the companies involved are justifying this imposition by “misinterpreting” the legislation, “erroneously resorting to certain legal provisions in the Labor Code that do not fit the context of the ‘blackout’.”
However, it argues, “it was not a catastrophe,” nor did the companies find themselves “in a crisis situation” or “in a difficult economic situation,” so the requirements for the application of the measure of “temporary closure and reduction of activity” or ‘lay-off’, as has been argued to the employees, are not met.
“It is, indeed, opportunism,” accuses Sinttav.
According to the union, Article 197 of the Labor Code “considers work stoppage due to technical reasons […] or power failure as work time,” establishing that the violation of this principle “constitutes a serious offense subject to punishment.”
“It is not acceptable for companies to seek to distort what is laid out in the law, to impose on workers the obligation to assume a work stoppage they had no responsibility for,” it concludes.
On April 28, a widespread power outage left mainland Portugal, Spain, and Andorra almost without electricity, as well as a portion of France’s territory.
Airports were closed, transport and traffic were congested in major cities, and fuel shortages were among the consequences of the blackout.
The European Network of Transmission System Operators announced the creation of a committee to investigate the causes of this blackout, which it described as “exceptional and severe” and which left Portugal and Spain in darkness.
