Dictamen No. 169-16 of the Dirección del Trabajo, issued on February 27, 2026, reconsiders prior instructions and establishes a clear rule: any collective instrument arising from a regulated collective bargaining process must be registered as a collective agreement, with a minimum duration of two years and a maximum of three. If your company signed or is negotiating a collective instrument, the DT no longer accepts registrations below that floor, even if the parties agreed to it. The underlying argument: waiving that period in advance violates a labor right of public order.
What happened
The Dirección del Trabajo administers the registration of collective instruments through the Administrative Procedures Manual on Collective Bargaining and Strikes. That manual contemplated a pre-registration correction procedure: if the filed instrument did not comply with the deadlines of article 324 of the Labor Code, the DT would notify the parties so that, within three business days, they could adjust the duration. Up to that point, the procedure was familiar. What changes with Dictamen No. 169-16 is the underlying criterion. Article 324 distinguishes two types of instruments. Collective agreements —which arise from regulated bargaining— must have a term of between two and three years. Collective pacts —from unregulated bargaining— may last up to three years, with no equivalent statutory minimum. The DT concluded that registering an instrument arising from regulated bargaining as a collective pact with a duration of less than two years is equivalent to an advance waiver of labor rights. Since article 324 is a rule of public order, that waiver is not valid. As of this ruling, if the parties do not voluntarily adjust the term within the three business-day period, the DT registers the instrument according to the type of procedure that gave rise to it and with the corresponding maximum legal duration, notifying the parties of the adjustment. The rule is straightforward: the origin of the instrument determines its type, and its type determines its minimum duration. There is no room to choose the more convenient label.
What this may mean for your company
The point is not minor if your company has active unions or has been closing collective bargaining processes in recent months. Before the ruling, there was a practice —not expressly sanctioned— of registering the outcome of a regulated bargaining process as a collective pact with a shorter duration. That allowed the parties to make deadlines more flexible below the two-year floor. With Dictamen No. 169-16, that option disappears. The distinction that matters: the restriction applies only to instruments from regulated collective bargaining. Pacts derived from unregulated bargaining —with no equivalent minimum floor in article 324— retain their usual flexibility. The ruling does not affect them. If your company uses both negotiation routes, the impact is not symmetrical. What this means in practice: if you recently signed a collective instrument with a term of less than two years in the context of a regulated bargaining process, and that instrument has already been registered, it is worth reviewing the situation. The effects of the ruling on prior registrations are not resolved by the text of Dictamen No. 169-16 itself. That is the gray area that remains open. There is another angle. Some companies use the duration of the collective instrument as a tool to manage the bargaining cycle: a shorter instrument speeds up the next round; a longer one postpones it. With this ruling, that tactic is no longer available for regulated instruments. In the absence of voluntary agreement within the three business days, the DT registers with the maximum legal duration —and the bargaining cycle is set by the rule, not by the contract. For employers with multiple unions or with staggered bargaining throughout the year, the impact may be relevant for planning labor relations and personnel costs in the medium term.
What you can do
If your company has regulated collective bargaining processes underway or planned for the coming months, three concrete actions:
- Audit the collective instruments registered in the last 12 months. Verify that those arising from regulated bargaining have a duration of at least two years. If any were registered with a shorter duration, assess the legal risk with specialized counsel before a dispute arises between the parties.
- Update internal protocols for managing collective labor relations. Incorporate the criterion of Dictamen No. 169-16 as an operational rule: any instrument from regulated bargaining is negotiated and signed with a duration between two and three years. Avoid having the DT set the term.
- Train the HR team or those who participate in bargaining tables. Ignorance of the doctrinal change can lead to failure to comply with the three business-day period for voluntary adjustment —and in that case, the decision on duration is left to the DT.
If you need to assess the impact of this new DT doctrine on your collective bargaining processes or on instruments already registered, schedule a meeting with our team. https://calendar.app.google/f13cTubrP12uveuBA This content is informational and does not constitute legal advice for a specific case. Source: Dictamen No. 169-16 — Dirección del Trabajo (via Lizama Abogados)