The Supreme Court has established that a nursing assistant who had 194 temporary interim contracts without interruption and totaled more than 4,100 working days must be considered indefinite, not permanent.
In a ruling dated October 31 to which Efe has had access, the social court has upheld the appeal for the unification of doctrine presented by the worker against a March 2021 ruling by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia.
According to the worker’s work life, between 2007 and 2019 she provided nursing assistant services to the Andalusian Health Service (formerly the Costa del Sol Public Health Business Agency) through 197 contracts “without interruption between them”, which adds up to a total of 4,184 days, just under 12 years.
Of those 197 contracts, 194, including the last one, were interim contracts.
The employee defended that there was no valid temporary contract, since in reality a “concatenation of temporary contracts has been used to cover a permanent, structural and indefinite activity”, with a long duration in time.
The TSJA agreed with the health company, but now the supreme court endorses the worker’s claims, and refers to previous jurisprudence, recalling that the correct interpretation of temporary contracts must include “in addition to the technical-legal aspects, the situation of the temporary worker, their expectations and the activity carried out by the corresponding public entity as a contracting entity”.
In general, labor legislation does not establish a precise and exact term for the duration of the interim contract due to vacancy, the ruling indicates.
In the case analyzed, it is a contractual chain of temporary contracts, with a recognized seniority since December 2007, a situation that “was maintained on the date of filing of the claim, without evidence that the position had been called from that distant time.” date”.
The Supreme Court considers that the plaintiff’s temporary employment relationship has had an “unjustifiably long” extension, a duration that has been due to the “absolute inactivity of the defendant administration” in fulfilling its obligation to convene and execute the appropriate processes so that Vacancies could be filled indefinitely.
With this, compliance with the object of the contract has been left to the discretion of the employing party, without its inactivity being able to justify the temporary nature of the contract, the ruling adds.
The magistrates understand that there has been fraud of law due to the “extraordinarily long extension of time -of the contract-, without any reason or justification and with non-compliance by the defendant entity with its obligations in relation to the coverage of the place.” .
