The extraordinary general meeting of the company Salcai-Utinsa, a public limited company, held on November 14, agreed at a meeting held at the Heidelberg school in Las Palmas to request and obtain the qualification of a labor company "and its transformation from a public limited company into a public limited labor company", according to sources from the company told Maspalomas24H, "for its adaptation to the current social reality". What underlies this is the competition for bus lines that must be carried out in 2027 and perhaps someone is trying to position that the SAL have a better fit in the business model for the awarding of routes by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria.
In this way, everything goes back to the beginning of time when the Salcai company, formed in the Las Palmas transport union environment, started a very different company format to that of Utinsa. While Salcai was a SAL, Utinsa, the poor sister because it did not have the income from tourism, was a SA. The business remains the same: what makes money are the tourist routes in the south of Gran Canaria, an extractive colony from which to generate resources, leaving the surroundings of high-density labour areas of Maspalomas, Playa del Inglés, Meloneras and San Agustín in the hands of God, disconnecting from neighbourhoods such as Salobre, Calderín or Castillo del Romeral.
The main difference lies in the type of partners. In the case of SA, partners can be natural persons or legal entities and no employment relationship is required between them. In SAL, partners are mostly permanent employees with an employment relationship with the company. Other differences are related to share capital, employee participation, the transfer of shares and social responsibility and administration.
In a SA, the share capital may be held by external shareholders; the workers do not have to be shareholders or owners, the shares can be freely transferred between shareholders and liability is limited to the capital contributed. In a SAL, the share capital belongs mainly to workers who perform permanent paid services, and no partner may own more than one third of the share capital in shares, except in exceptional cases. The transfer of shares can only be carried out freely if there is no purchase offer; otherwise, the transfer must be made “inter vivos” between the working partners and the permanent employees. It allows the appointment of an administrator with a permanent status.
