- The Navarre Administration shall pay three temporary public employees EUR 35,000, EUR 115,000 and EUR 50,000 in compensation for undue dismissal. This has been determined by the Social Courts of Pamplona/Iruña. At the moment, the LAB trade union is processing more than 50 cases of temporary public staff. The union has warned that if sentences like these three are given, the administration will have to pay millions of euros in damages.
“There are many equal workers,” said Ainara Elar on behalf of the LAB trade union: “Temporary contracts are being abused, they have been cutting rights to temporary public employees for years and, as long as they are not decided by the courts, they are not paid the grade, seniority, family support and/or severance payments.”
It has provided the following information: “It is absurd for public sector managers to assume that more than half of their staff are temporary. In LAB we have calculated that some 10,000 places of foreign administration should be taken to the OPE, so that temporality is exceptional, with a maximum of 8%. We call on public administrations to once and for all stabilise the workforce and ensure decent working conditions.”
The Administration has committed "legal fraud" in these three cases
The judgments reflect the latest doctrine of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). This doctrine was collected in a judgment of June 3, 2021 and was subsequently collected by the Spanish Supreme Court in a judgment of June 28, 2021. It sets out the effect of maintaining vacant jobs in the Public Administration for an extended and unjustified period of time.
“In all three cases they are women who have been working in the administration for many years,” added Barkos: “It also draws attention to the fact that the former level E of cleaners in the centres is produced at the highest workplaces in the administration, as well as at level A, as in the case of doctors, and at the lowest level.”
As explained by lawyer Juantxo Barkos, the courts have found that the Administration has committed a legal fraud in these three cases because it has used administrative contracts that do not meet the established requirements. For example, with regard to deadlines, the Supreme Court has set a three-year deadline for declaring that a temporary contract is being unjustifiably extended, i.e. there is no reason for the Administration not to include this vacancy in the next public job offer, and three years for considering it to be a regular and non-extraordinary necessity. In such cases, therefore, he believes that there is legal fraud.