1. Holiday pay must include all ordinary salary items
The Labour Chamber of the Supreme Court revised its case law and stated that collective bargaining agreements must always respect EU directives and their interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In this case, the Supreme Court held that all workers’ ordinary salary items must be taken into account to calculate holiday pay.
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2. Workers need not notify the company in advance to enjoy the flexible working hours established in a collective bargaining agreement
The Supreme Court held that workers do not have to notify the company in advance to enjoy the flexible working hours established in the collective bargaining agreement, provided that the new working hours are within the working day set by the collective bargaining agreement. The Supreme Court stated that the company’s argument that workers were deprived of this right because of the cost of maintaining a monitoring system was groundless.
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3. Concept and application of the principle under which there must be unity between back-to-back temporary employment contracts
In this case, a worker was dismissed after working under approximately 20 temporary employment contracts during seven years with a seven-month break between the penultimate and final contract. The Labour Chamber of the Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeal and confirmed the decision of the High Court of Justice of Castile and León, which had held that the principle under which there must be unity between back-to-back temporary contracts (unidad esencial del vínculo) did not apply because the continuity of the contractual relationship had been broken.
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4. Contractual subrogation. The liability in article 44 of the Statute of Workers does not apply in cases of contractual succession derived from the collective bargaining agreement
The Supreme Court held that, in cases of contract succession imposed by the collective bargaining agreement, the company succession regulation set out in article 44 of the Statute of Workers does not apply. The subrogation is instead regulated by the collective bargaining agreement itself.
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5. Back-pay extends to the notification of the court ruling clarifying the decision
The Supreme Court confirmed that back-pay (salarios de tramitación) extends to the notification of the court ruling clarifying the decision, provided that clarification has not been sought to delay the proceedings.
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6. The employment conditions in an extra-statutory agreement need not be maintained nor are workers entitled to the conditions that are more favourable after its expiry
The Supreme Court held that a company is entitled to modify the contents of an extra-statutory agreement following its expiry, without that circumstance being considered a substantial modification of working conditions. This is due to the fact that the agreement is not a collective bargaining agreement and thus its effects do not continue to apply after it expires (i.e. it does not have ultraactividad).
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7. A company is not entitled to file a claim requesting that a collective redundancy agreed with the works council be declared lawful
The Supreme Court held that, once an agreement with the company’s works council has been reached which concludes a collective dismissal process, the company is not entitled to file a claim requesting that the redundancy decision be declared lawful.
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8. Reducing incentives in response to workers’ exercise of their statutory right to paid leave is unlawful
The National Court declared that considering workers’ legal and statutory paid leave as an absence from work for the purpose of a voluntary bonus plan is unlawful. This practice is also indirectly discriminatory towards women and is generally an abuse of workers’ rights.
