The Benidorm City Council has received a judicial reprimand for its way of managing Human Resources that would bring out the colors in anyone and that comes to put black on white what public workers and unions come denouncing for years: the neglect and systematic failure to fulfill their obligations in labor and salary matters with respect to some of its officials.
The anger is expressly collected in the last sentence that a municipal worker has won the Consistory, following a lawsuit that the magistrate himself labels as “one of the most enigmatic demands of all that this Court has received“Because of the Administration’s way of proceeding.
The ruling, issued by the Contentious Administrative Court number 3 of Alicante on March 7 and once morest which there is no appeal, obliges the municipal coffers to pay regarding 11,000 euros, plus costs and interest, to this worker for spending years performing functions of a higher category without receiving the corresponding remuneration.
Specifically, since August 2010, when the affected person, who has a position as a library assistant technician, began working as an administrative assistant assigned to the department of public roads and mobility. The judge, however, lowers the period to be compensated and only recognizes February 4, 2015 as the start date, since previous years would have already prescribed.
A trail of judgments once morest
With this, there are already at least 24 court rulings that have been pronounced once morest the Benidorm City Council for the same reasons in recent years. This has been transferred by sources of the Professional Union of Local Police and Firefighters (SPPLB), majority in the municipal personnel board and in which the majority of workers are affiliated to whom the Justice has ended up recognizing their right to receive extra remuneration.
And, following this long list of cases once morest, one of the magistrates has put its finger on the Administration’s sore spot: “We must point out that if he had complied with the obligation imposed by article 21 of Law PACA 39/2015, that is, the OBLIGATION TO EXPRESSLY RESOLVE any request that is presented to him (maximum a request that comes from his own staff ) we would have an administrative act, which, if it had been positive, I would have avoided the lawsuit“, collects verbatim the ruling.
After this first paragraph, the reproach continues: “We might have known the position of the defendant Administration, and all this without economic cost for any of the parties, and especially for the municipal coffers, as will be specified later in matters of costs”.
“Distorted Use of Silence”
“Going to administrative silence means that a City Council the size of Benidorm he hasn’t bothered to do anything at all, in the case of a request from his own staff”, maintains the magistrate, who then alerts: “It is no longer acceptable to continue operating like this. These behaviors, although they were perfectly normal in the Administration of more than half a century ago for which the already repealed Law of Administrative Procedure of 1958 was enacted, are no longer admissible for some Administrations, those of the 21st century, which are at the service of the citizens, and not the other way around”.
The anger goes even further when the judge points out that the fact that “an Administration resolves by silence (that is, does not resolve) is somewhat frustrating for the applicant. And doubly frustrating for those who, in addition, are staff of the Administration itself and is subject to the usual relationship of special subjection, which in this case seems to work in only one direction”, following which it states that “all this implies that the Benidorm City Council is forcing the applicant to prosecute a silence which, as is known, is nothing more than a legal fiction so that the appellant can go to court”.
“We are facing a absolutely distorting use of administrative silence, inappropriate for a modern Administration, which seems to have remained anchored in practices typical of decades that we considered to have been overcome”, concludes the ruling, following which it recounts, verbatim, how “in the case at hand and only when the plaintiff, before the silence of the Administration, which following more than 8 months since the first request nothing had been resolved, he files his lawsuit and the same is answered by the Administration (THREE YEARS AFTER the first request) is when finally the appellant (and all) we have been able to know the reasons of the Administration. But this might (and should) have been done by the Benidorm City Council at the time”. Three years later.
After everything mentioned above, the sentence alludes to the defense carried out by the Consistory and recognizes that “it is very difficult to know the procedural strategy followed by the defendant Administration”. In any case, the judge affirms that “the exercise of functions of a higher category by the appellant is accredited” by means of different tests, for which he condemns the City Council to pay the money that he failed to receive and sentences him, in addition, to the payment of interest and costs.
The SPPLB asks the mayor for protection
From the SPPLB union they have highlighted that “it was regarding time that the courts put the spotlight on this neglect of the Administration” and they have “congratulated what the Judge stated in this same sentence, since it seems to be a faithful reflection of all the writings presented by this trade union center, where we have lost our breath, denouncing the indignation and weariness provoked because they systematically force us to go to court.”
For this reason, its spokesman, Francisco Ángel González, has advanced that in the face of this “helplessness” in which, in his opinion, the officials find themselves, the Professional Union affirms that it has asked the mayor, Toni Pérez, “to take action on the matter and stop once and for all for all this unfortunate, embarrassing and shameful situation, which a judge recounts verbatim in an impeccable and forceful way, making it clear and clear to the Benidorm City Council what it should have done and what it is not doing”.
Lastly, they maintain that “neither the workers of this City Council, nor the citizens of Benidorm, nor Benidorm deserve the way this administration acts, which boasts of being at the forefront of everything and then it turns out that the workers who are precisely in charge to achieve these objectives, they are treated as if we were in the last century. Someone must give us an explanation now”.