GLOBAL SALES SOLUTIONS LINE SLU – Court Ruling (Spain, 2022)

The Labour Chamber of the Spanish National High Court dealt with an appeal from a case in which a trade union sued a company for not providing their workers a corporate email and asking for a personal email instead (among other things). The workers were working remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company demanded their private emails in order to be able to communicate with the workers for diverse matters such as holidays requests, leaves, etc. This was established by a clause in their contracts. The company had also previously agreed to provide corporate emails to the workers. Additionally, the company had suffered a data breach in which their employees' private emails had been compromised. Upon this, the trade union had also asked the company to provide the list of such emails so they could communicate with the workers. The company replied that they would not provide the workers' emails without their consent. Given these facts, the Court first remarks that the law obliges the employer to provide their workers every means necessary to achieve develop their professional activity. In this regard, also, the law regulating remote work, passed in 2020, establishes that in any case, companies shall be obliged to provide the means, equipment, tools and consumables required for the development of remote work. Additionally, the Court highlights that the Court's case law has already established that demanding workers to provide their personal email or phone is a violation of GDPR, since, should they be necessary for the development of the workers' activity, they should hence be provided by the company. Therefore, the company would have breach the data minimisation principle from Article 5(1)(c) GDPR. With regard to the union's demand to provide a list of the workers' emails, the Court stated that, also according to the Court's case law, providing such list does not require consent since it is necessary for the development of the purposes of the right (and freedo