The parent company of the supermarket chain will face a new legal dispute over the application of multifunctional contracts.
At the end of 2022, the company suffered its biggest setback, after a first instance ruling declared that these contracts were not in accordance with the law for not providing labor certainties, following a lawsuit filed by the Union. The Court of Appeals upheld that ruling and today the Company is awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision.
However, on August 26, Walmart’s National Federation of Workers, which groups 14,600 members and some 130 unions at different locations throughout Chile, took its own path by filing a lawsuit related to the same issue in the Second Labor Court of Santiago.
A dispute that could permeate the entire retail industry
The issue of multifunctional contracts is not something that affects only Walmart. This figure is being applied by most retailers, which have had to digitize and transform their operations in view of the new industry scenario. The case of Lider’s parent company appears to be the most advanced, but it is a discussion that is gaining momentum in the rest of the companies.
There seems to be a consensus that the industry cannot continue operating in the traditional way, but the debate tends to focus on the reconversion process and the application of the new labor regimes. “Indeed, technological changes and the new ways in which services are provided are far from the conception of labor law that existed when the law was enacted,” says Jorge Arredondo, partner and director of AZ’s labor group.
The lawyer explains that the current legislation establishes as a principle the certainty of the worker in his functions, but also that these can be complementary or alternative. “Compatibilizing the developments of technology with our regulations and the principle of certainty, I would believe that it may be relevant to open the range of possibilities regarding the description of functions, always respecting certainty,” he adds.
Source: Diario Financiero, September 11, 2023.
