Today I had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Rodríguez. For those who don't know him, I'll tell you briefly. He is a local police officer from Arrecife who has begun a titanic struggle against the Public Administration to defend his fundamental rights, to defend his right to work. After suffering a work accident in 2015 that led to a declaration of permanent disability, this municipal official requested his reinstatement in the Arrecife City Council through a relocation to a job according to his new limitations, which is legally known as "transfer to second activity". Not only did he see his demand go unanswered, but he was faced with an inexplicable dismissal.
There was no need, and I say this with legal knowledge, just a little, just enough to explain that, by virtue of Law 6/1997, of July 4, on the coordination of Local Police of the Canary Islands, and specifically its article 33.1, an file could have been put together. This legal provision establishes the possibility that the Municipal Plenary agrees to the transfer to a second activity of a local police officer who sees his capacity to fulfill the ordinary service diminished, after a medical opinion.
It's that simple: the request made is processed, a report is requested from the National Institute of Social Security assessing the disability, which establishes both the detailed explanation of the functions he performed before the disability was declared and those he would perform in the second activity, and the compatibility between the pension and the remuneration to be collected by the City Council, to then proceed to the issuance of a report from Human Resources or the Secretariat regarding the legal procedure for the agreement to be adopted by the Plenary and, finally, take the matter to a plenary session.
It is incomprehensible that the dismissal measure was adopted without even processing the request made by the official, although it is not the first time that under the mandate of Doña Eva de Anta de Benito it has been acted in this way, with erroneous legal basis and evident damage to municipal personnel.
The Mayor of Arrecife began her journey in office by dismissing the Municipal Secretary, for which she has been definitively convicted for nothing more and nothing less than violating fundamental rights. She continued dismantling the legal service, a department for whose creation the preceding mayors fought so hard. She continued granting the transfer to municipal workers as qualified as the Head of Human Resources to the Island Collection Agency. Once in the thick of it, she issued "a single decree" to prevent personnel from performing higher category jobs, without taking into account the particular situations of each case or each area. And finally, with fine tricks worthy of study, she facilitated the departure from the Arrecife City Council of the Comptroller - and at the same time National Qualified Official - who was not to her liking.
The described movements have had repercussions on municipal life, such as the fact that the Arrecife Secretariat is once again taking matters to the Plenary without mandatory reports, condemning its councilors to total legal insecurity. Cases such as the latest one of the transfer of land to the Government of the Canary Islands confirm this.
In addition, the Arrecife City Council does not present a defense in judicial, labor or contentious lawsuits, including expropriation lawsuits with a great impact on municipal coffers, for months, which is an "open secret". On the other hand, we find a Human Resources department still headless and with evident management failures that does not respond to the requirements of the Labor Inspectorate, nor does it comply with the regulations regarding the prevention of occupational hazards. I must also mention what happened by virtue of the "decree", which has caused situations such as that electrical workers cannot solve lighting or traffic light failure problems because their job category prevents them from doing so, or that many contracts are not formalized because there is no person who can be designated as responsible despite having performed those functions for many years. And I cannot overlook the Intervention Department, the dark hole victim of all the ills that plague us, that area that has been collapsed again after the departure of the National Qualified Official. Yes, that department that is now headed by a municipal technician, who in turn must abandon her position in another area, causing a new shortage of human resources.
That's how things are, and on top of that, the citizens of Arrecife have to suffer in our flesh that Doña Eva de Anta de Benito tells us that the malfunctioning of Arrecife is due to the "lack of personnel". Dumbfounded. That's how I am when I hear such a brazenness from a person who with her actions has dismantled the municipal services and who, instead of recognizing her mistake and trying to correct them, seems determined to continue destroying an Administration with her disastrous management in Human Resources.
Having said all this, I can only add that more emphasis should be placed on the Human Resources of the Arrecife City Council. Without a doubt, a department that is the skeleton, the roots of the Administration, should be prioritized, because it is the people who work in the City Council who can make it function like a perfectly oiled machine. Of course, for that you need a good direction, a "good boss", a "good boss", which does not seem to be the case at the moment in our City Council.
Nayra Callero, Lawyer/Former Councilor for Human Resources of the Arrecife City Council
