The Batllia knocks down the demand for 150 SAAS workers: the hospital does not have to pay the premium for objectives from 2012 to 2024

The collective demand of 150 workers of the Andorran Health Care Service (SAAS)transported through the health branch of the USdAhas suffered a first judicial setback: seven months after the holding of the oral hearing, the Batllia has rejected the plaintiffs claim to collectwith retroactive effects, the salary bonus for objectives that was abolished on 2012. A judicial setback that is appealable to Superior Court despite the fact that yesterday from the union they did not advance whether they will continue the lawsuit and they did not evaluate the sentence: at noon they still had not had access to it. The decision is not only unfavorable because it rejects the right to collect the premiums of the 2012 at 2024 -since they were removed as a measure to contain public expenditure due to the economic crisis until the demand for payment was formulated in SAS–, also because it requires the plaintiffs to pay the procedural costs, including attorney’s fees.

The judgment orders the plaintiffs to pay the costs

The workers based the demand on the law that revoked, theyear 2022the elimination of the so-called DPO ten years before The argument made is that the 2012 the payment had been suspended but not deleted because the regulations governing the supplement were still in force, therefore by revoking the 2012 decision the staff he was entitled to collect the premium of the previous years. Subsidiarily, the annuities of 2023 and the 2024despite the fact that another fundamental element entered into the legal analysis, the collective agreement signed on 2022 and that he expressly left out the DPO. What did the workers say? That the agreement between the works committee and management could not deprive the staff of a legally recognized right to remuneration. The written representation of SAS rejected all the demands, fencing that the 2012 the suppression, not the suspension, had been decided, and that after the 2022 the collective agreement had expressly excluded the supplement. In addition, he alleged the prescription of the economic demand.

The claim before July 31, 2023 is considered time-barred

The judgment concludes that the claim is effectively time-barred by the party that affects the period prior to July 31, 2023. the DPO is I collectedin the July 31 on the basis of the objectives achieved since July 1 of the previous year. The term is marked by Labor relations codewhich determines that for all those actions derived from the employment contract the expiration date is one year. The Batllia decided that, according to this precept, a claim could only be made for the term that had started on 1 of July 2022 and that the July 31, 2023 because the first administrative demand of the employees to the SAS claiming the payment was precisely from July 31, 2024.

But beyond whether or not the demand was extemporaneous, the Batllia concludes that it has no basis. Cite the article from the Act of 2012 which expressly includes the verb “delete” referring to the DPO and, consequently, that “the interpretation of the agent party according to which the complement cannot be shared DPO would have continued to accrue during the years following the 2012remaining only pending its payment”. Therefore, the sentence is clear in the sense of dictating that the repeal contained in the Law 4/2022 “it does not necessarily entail the automatic reestablishment of the legal situations prior to its entry into force, nor does it determine the retroactive recovery of the rights that that provision had suppressed.” What happens from 2022 with the collective agreement determines the decision on the bonus for objectives from that date, it was not collected in the remuneration structure “leaving without effect the internal regulations that previously regulated itIn addition, the element necessary to pay them, the objectives to be met by the workers and to be evaluated by the management, was not fixed either.

The governing body reported the result of the judicial decision in an internal memo yesterday morning, expressing respect for the court decision and also the staff right to claim their interests. The note highlights that the DPO they are once again a reality in the new collective agreement, in force since this year, and emphasizes the relevance of collective bargaining to make progress in improving working conditions.