Chile: The Labor Directorate redefines its position and rules that the determination of minimum services must precede the start of collective bargaining

Through Ruling No. 264/22, dated May 7, 2026, the Labor Directorate reconsidered the doctrine set in Ruling No. 451/16, issued in July 2025, and determined that minimum services and emergency teams must be qualified before initiating a collective bargaining process.

What did the 2025 ruling state?                

In the opinion of the National Director of Labor at that time, the fact that minimum services and emergency teams had not been qualified was not an impediment to initiating collective bargaining, with the exception of cases involving a company where no prior union exists, in which the law explicitly provides that collective bargaining may not be initiated during the period in which the qualification of said services remains pending.

What is being reconsidered in that ruling?

The new National Director of Labor maintains that Article 360 of the Labor Code expressly provides that minimum services and emergency teams "shall be qualified before the initiation of collective bargaining," establishing a mandatory formula ("shall") and precisely fixing its temporal requirement ("before the initiation"), which constitutes a prior legal condition and not just a procedural formality.

Accordingly, the Labor Directorate determines that minimum services and emergency teams must be qualified before the initiation of collective bargaining, constituting a prerequisite for its admissibility pursuant to Article 360 of the Labor Code.

This ruling is of fundamental importance insofar as it will prevent the initiation of the collective bargaining process in those companies in which the qualification of minimum services and emergency teams remains pending.

What happens with those collective bargaining processes that were initiated without the qualification of minimum services?

The Labor Directorate states in its previously cited ruling No. 264/22 that, in those cases where bargaining had already started without the respective qualification, the procedure will be considered not in accordance with the law, and therefore must be suspended until the qualification is completed, after which they may continue from the point at which they were suspended.