The Supreme Court reached a ruling on June 20 in which it is stated that suppressing the food allowance for workers unilaterally constitutes a modification of their working conditions, according to EFE. The sentence has been given as a result of an appeal presented by the company Aena against a sentence of the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia. The original judgment dated May 2020
In September 2012, the company in charge of managing airports notified its employees in writing of the removal of the mid-day meal bonus. These changes affected the afternoon shift staff, who paid 1.20 euros daily for a meal with a value of 5.37 euros.
Elimination of social benefits
This decision by the company to eliminate the midday meal subsidy that it had paid to the afternoon shift workers “undoubtedly constitutes a substantial modification of working conditions, to the extent that it supposes the definitive suppression of a social benefit of the that they will enjoy until then”, concludes the court. It is also a benefit “of not insignificant economic relevance, at the rate of the sum of 4.17 euros per day.”
The workers, adds the Supreme Court, thus lose economic aid from the company of a “considerable” amount, which implies “substantial proof of the employment relationship because it definitively and permanently affects an element as decisive as is the amount of the remuneration, without contemplating any kind of compensation or consideration on the part of the employer”.
Once this premise is established, the judicial challenge of this action must be made through the procedural modality duly provided for this purpose and within the “inexorable expiration period” that it entails, warn the Supreme Court.
After the entry into force of the Law Regulating the Social Jurisdiction, the “controversial” expiration period of twenty days for challenging substantial modifications to working conditions is applicable in any case, adds the sentence, which emphasizes that “the action that was exercised in the lawsuit had to submit in any case to the aforementioned expiration period”.
