The Court of Justice of the European Union considers that temporary workers in the Public Administration who have been in this situation for several years should be considered permanent employees. The ruling made public this morning from Luxembourg comes at the request of a request from the Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Interior of the Community of Madrid, the UNED and the Madrid Agency for Social Care of the Community of Madrid.
In the ruling, the court details that "since the Administration in question has not convened, within the established period, a selective process for the definitive coverage of the position occupied by a non-permanent permanent worker, the fixed-term contract that binds that worker with said Administration has been automatically extended".
Javier Araúz, lawyer for interim and temporary workers in the public sector, assures that "this ruling necessarily leads to the transformation of all public employees who are victims of abuse into permanent ones", ruling out previous solutions such as converting them to non-permanent permanent workers, compensation upon termination of the contract or the call for stabilization processes. At the same time, it modifies what has been seen recently in the Spanish judicial field. "The rulings obtained in the Spanish courts have been mostly dismissive because there is no legislation in our country that allows the automatic transformation of temporary contracts into permanent contracts without passing selective processes," he says.
In recent months, the different Spanish administrations have been carrying out "staff stabilization" processes to convert interim employees into civil servants through a competition. In the case of the services area of the Generalitat, for example, 90% of the long-term interim workers passed the process and are now civil servants. Those who did not succeed have been compensated with an average of 15,000 euros.
According to Araúz, the ruling may cause those interim workers who were left out of the stabilization processes to be reinstated in their positions.
