The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has sentenced a company to pay 1,250 extra hours to a worker for not having kept the mandatory registration. Since this report does not exist, the responsibility of the company since the modification of the Workers’ Statute of 2019, the court considers that “each and every one of the hours that the worker says he did” must be accredited. In a previous sentence, a court agreed with the company and affirmed that the hours could not be paid because there was no accredited record. Now the TSJC condemns the company to pay the worker 15,212.50 euros plus 10% late-payment interest.
The worker claimed 1,250 overtime hours carried out from July 1, 2020 to June 14, 2021. However, the first instance ruling issued on April 29, 2022, did not uphold the claim because neither the operator nor the company -who did not appear at the trial- had not accredited the performance of overtime.
The TSJC admits that from the point of view of jurisprudence it had usually been the worker who had to prove that he had worked the hours he claimed. But at the same time remember that in March 2019 the Workers’ Statute was modified in such a way that since then it is the companies that must keep a daily record of working hours. This has meant, indicates the TSJC, “a Copernican turn” in terms of the burden of proof.
For this reason, the court indicates, the non-submission of the registration “can never favor the party that failed to comply with its obligations.” And he adds: “The burden of proof corresponds to the company and not to the workers, in the present case in which the company did not appear in court, each and every one of the hours that the worker says he did will be considered accredited” .
For all these reasons, the TSJC condemns the company to pay the workers 15,212.50 euros for the 1,250 overtime hours claimed, plus 10% interest for late payment.
