Aiming to respond to a series of complaints from retail workers, an inspection program was launched this week to monitor multifunctionality, meaning people are forced to take on different roles, with or without signing the relevant annexes to employment contracts.
In this context, according to Claudia Tapia de la Peña, Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, inspections are carried out in department stores and supermarkets to verify that the functions performed by workers comply with legal requirements.
“This plan covers a total of 461 establishments nationwide between September 1 and October 31, including 25 in our region, and takes into account the municipalities of Temuco, Angol, Victoria, Villarrica and Pucón. This plan follows repeated complaints from trade unions and workers’ associations that the so-called polyfunctionality is being implemented, which is illegal on the basis of labor legislation and case law, because it is necessary for those who carry out functions in this sector to be aware of their functions are safe,” said the representative.
Likewise, the Provincial Labor Inspector Víctor García explained: “In many cases there are people who are assigned a multitude of functions in a business and that is not allowed in our system since the Labor Code establishes the obligation to declare these functions his place of work, and not that it is at the employer’s discretion to distribute multiple tasks without this being specified in the store operator’s employment contract.
The complaints
As indicated by the complaining organizations, some workers were forced to take on the roles of “store operator”, “omnioperator”, “multi-operator” or “omnichannel assistant”, which does not exclude one or more positions with the same characteristics. with or without signing the respective appendices to employment contracts.
Therefore, it is checked whether the functions performed by employees in the above positions comply with the provisions of Article 10 No. 3 of the Labor Code.
Esteban Grollmus, Chairman of the Federation of Retail Workers (FESIR), pointed out that “in our region we have several complaints against multi-stores, there are even cases where the worker is forced to sign an annex to the contract, the new one They are assigned tasks and if they do not sign them, they can be fired. There are employers who commit this type of abuse by requiring employees to take on roles for which they were not hired. Currently there are very few people in the stores to operate them and the few workers that are left end up doing everything.”
Finally, the Labor Directorate reported that in addition to this specific point, the plan takes into account the monitoring of other matters such as: B. the lack of attendance records of employees with supervisory functions and/or area or department heads, the failure to update the employment contract and the services of temporary employment agencies and replacement of permanent positions. If a violation is found, the amount of possible fines is up to 60 UTM (large companies with 200 or more employees).
