A ruling by the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community will oblige Correos to compensate the extra hours performed by temporary workers, those who have only provided services during part of the year and exceed the proportional maximum working day. The TSJCV thus dismisses an appeal by the Post Office and Telegraphs against the ruling of the Social Court number 1 of Alicante that responded to a demand from the Postal Solidarity Union.
The ruling that Correos appealed condemned the company to pay 3,000 euros to three temporary workers for carrying out 263 overtime hours in 2016 for having exceeded the maximum proportional hours of their contracts.
Proportionally exceeded the maximum working day
Now, the Valencian TSJ maintains in its entirety the condemnatory ruling that prolongs that the company had to pay overtime because the workers had exceeded the working hours proportional to the time of their contracts and that the maximum annual working hours of a permanent worker could not be applied to them. service all year.
“Fixed the proportion of hours worked in the time worked, with discount for holidays and medical leave, as well as part-time and taking into account the hours in annual calculation of working hours, the extra hours that relate to each of the workers”, is specified in the sentence.
The ruling adds that the previous sentence “does not suffer from the defects” that Correos claimed, but, “on the contrary, the magistrate makes a detailed list of hours that each of the actors worked during the year 2016, and on the legal basis, sufficient reason, the reasons why it determines in each appropriate case are the overtime performed”.
To equalize the rights of all workers
According to the Postal Solidarity Union, the sentence “resolves the situation of generalized conflict in claims for overtime by temporary workers of Correos and other companies for exceeding the maximum annual hours provided for in the Collective Agreements.”
In this sense, they have affirmed that they opted “for an application of a maximum proportional annual working day, based on the time worked and equalizing the rights of temporary and part-time workers with those of permanent workers”.
For example, they have indicated, in a company with a maximum annual working day of 1,826 hours a year, if a person has a six-month temporary contract, their maximum proportional annual working hours would be 913 hours, that is, half of the total. If his contract establishes that he works eight hours a day, five days a week, during the six months of the contract, he would have worked a total of 960 hours, thus exceeding the maximum proportional annual working day of 913 hours.
“Enforce your rights and claim the corresponding payment for the overtime worked”
In this case, the maximum proportional annual working day limit established by law would have been exceeded, which could generate consequences for the employee, such as economic sanctions and/or the obligation to pay overtime to the worker, they have explained from Postal Solidarity . In addition, the worker could report the situation to the labor authorities to “enforce his rights and claim the corresponding payment for the extra hours worked,” they have concluded.
