Companies with more than 50 employees will have to develop LGTBI protocols within three months

The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday the LGTBI protocol that will oblige companies within three months to plan measures and allocate resources to achieve effective equality for this group in the workplace. It is a text that is six months late and will force companies to open hundreds of collective bargaining agreements.
 

According to experts consulted by Economist & Jurist, from this publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), collective bargaining will have three months to incorporate the measures agreed in collective agreements.
 

This period is extended to six months for companies that do not have collective bargaining agreements, and companies with fewer than 50 workers are exempted from taking them on board, for which the definition of specific protocols for this matter will be voluntary.

Specifically, this plan will oblige companies to include plans with the priority objective of ‘preventing, correcting and eliminating all forms of discrimination’ in employment, as well as the progressive implementation of ‘equality indicators’ that take into account ‘the reality of LGTBI people’ in the public and private sectors.

Alberto Novoa, labour partner at RocaJunyent, points out that ‘it was not until yesterday, October 8th, that the awaited Royal Decree 1026/2024 was published in the BOE, developing the planned set of measures for equality and non-discrimination of LGTBI people in companies’.

‘And I say expected because Law 4/2023 of 1 March established the obligation for companies to have an LGTBI Plan from 2 March 2024, but seven months later we have had no news of how it is developed, as article 15.1 of Law 4/2023 typified’, he notes, ranking that “once again, the delay of the legislator has generated a framework of uncertainty for companies with more than 50 workers who, for seven months, have not known very well, how to deal with compliance with the obligation”.
In his opinion, from the eight pages of the Royal Decree and its two annexes, we see how the legislator prioritises the negotiation of LGTBI measures at collective agreement level and establishes a period of three months from the entry into force of the Royal Decree to set up the negotiating committees in charge of negotiating the measures, i.e. the timeline is set at 10 January 2025.

From their point of view, ‘as a positive novelty, I would like to highlight that the Royal Decree establishes, for those companies that do not have an applicable collective bargaining agreement and are obliged to call trade union organisations, a solution to those cases in which those called to negotiate LGTBI plans do not respond, granting an initial period of 10 working days, extendable by another 10 if none of the organisations respond within the first period, adding that in the event of not obtaining a response within this second period of another 10 working days, the company may proceed unilaterally to determine the planned measures’.

‘In addition, the legislator, understanding the greater difficulty of setting up the negotiating committee in these cases, extends the deadline from 3 to 6 months, i.e. the timeline in these cases is 10 April 2025’, he says.
 

Access to the full article (available in Spanish)