S&S advises on Alliance Healthcare’s Supreme Court victory

Simmons & Simmons advises Alliance Healthcare on its victory in the Supreme Court.

This week the Supreme Court (SC) has endorsed that companies change the ’email’ for an ‘app’ to distribute union information, considering that there is no violation of freedom of association.

The Social Chamber, in a ruling for which its new president, Antonio Sempere, has been the rapporteur, thus dismisses an appeal by UGT, which considered its right to freedom of association to have been infringed by the decision of the pharmaceutical services provider Alliance Healthcare España, with some 1,200 employees throughout the country, to choose in 2020 an ‘app’ as a means of communication of general union information as opposed to email.

The magistrates, applying the doctrine of the Supreme Court itself and the Constitutional Court, start from the premise that communication with workers is a manifestation of freedom of association, so companies must allow unions to use the electronic communication system for these purposes, if they have one.

“This ruling represents a further advance in the jurisprudence of our courts on the use of company resources for trade union purposes, which is gradually adapting to the availability of new technologies. It allows companies and unions to adopt more effective systems of communication with workers than those that existed 20 years ago,” says Peñacoba.

The pharmaceutical company has been advised by the labor law team of Simmons & Simmons Spain, led by Eduardo Peñacoba -who is, in turn, managing partner of the firm in our country-, together with Jesús Gimeno, of counsel of the firm.