The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has declared that any temporary worker in an abusive temporary employment situation in the public sector in the Spanish State, including the jurisprudential figure of Indefinite Non-Fixed due to the failure to regulate in internal regulations and non-compliance with the European Framework Agreement on fixed-term work, must become permanent.
The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) indicates that temporary workers who are in a situation of legal fraud, with more than three years occupying the same position or through a concatenation of contracts, are suffering a situation of labor abuse. In its conclusions, it considers that Spanish legislation does not include adequate measures to avoid the abusive use of indefinite non-fixed contracts. Consequently, and in response to a question previously presented by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, the CJEU responds that in the absence of adequate measures to prevent and sanction abuses derived from the successive use of temporary contracts of any kind (labor, statutory, or civil servant), including indefinite non-fixed contracts extended successively, converting those temporary contracts into permanent ones may be the solution that corrects this abuse. A measure that will benefit hundreds of thousands of workers in the Spanish State.
Furthermore, European justice considers that Spanish legislation still does not include adequate measures to avoid the abusive use of indefinite non-fixed contracts, despite the use of "compensations" proposed by the Government. The compensation included for the first time in the public sector in the latest reform under Law 20/2021 is declared invalid by the CJEU as a sanction measure. This financial compensation was set at 20 days per year with a limit of 12 monthly payments, but it is not a sufficient measure as compensation or sanction because it is not effectively dissuasive nor is it related to the abuse suffered. To make matters worse, this compensation was not retroactive for the thousands of civil servants in abusive temporary employment who were still included in the selection processes of 2017-2018 at the time of its publication, who were mostly dismissed without any type of compensation or redress for the abuse produced.
On February 23, 2024, the Social Court No. 26 of Madrid resolved to apply permanence in her job based on the CJEU ruling to a Telemadrid worker advised by the legal cabinet of CGT who sued her situation of job stability.
We consider that this is a historic ruling that highlights a shameful situation of "labor abuse" for public sector workers that we have been denouncing for years. A resolution that highlights not only the institutional abandonment that has been exercised by the central, regional, and local governments, but also by unions such as UGT, CCOO, and CSIF that have done absolutely nothing to reverse the situation, beyond the 2021 pact to open "stabilization processes" that have not served to stabilize people in abusive temporary employment. We cannot forget that we have been saying for many years that the successive use of "fixed-term contracts or employment relationships" was a fraud and that what is needed now is a definitive legislative solution that resolves the situation.
*Member of the Canal Gestión works council representing the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).
