They get the wrong phone number and leave an interim teacher in Vigo without her job

The Department of Education of the Xunta de Galicia has been sentenced to pay 12,802 euros to a woman who was not assigned an interim place at the Vigo Professional Conservatory of Music due to an administrative error, as published this Tuesday by La Voz from Galicia.

This teacher was the next on the list to make a three-month replacement due to the leave of a teacher from the conservatory, but when it came to calling her by phone to notify her of the assignment, the Xeral Subdirectorate—the one in charge of managing these procedures— called a wrong number.

Apparently, they called that number – which did not correspond to the affected person – up to three times without receiving a response, and later they informed her by email that she had not responded to those calls. Only after she complained to Human Resources did they discover that, although it was the one that appeared in the databases, that was not her telephone number.

The teacher aspired to one of the two positions that corresponded to her, but she did not obtain any, since they were awarded to the two interim positions that preceded her and preceded her on the list. For this reason, she claimed compensation of 41,280 euros from the Xunta for damages due to the abnormal functioning of the Administration, although she later reduced her claims to 28,992.

For her part, the Vigo judge considered it proven that the Administration made an error. The ruling, handed down on December 4, 2023, indicates that the interim “did not have the legal duty to bear the negative effects of the lack of response to the calls to fill the positions on an erroneous telephone number, which was recorded as belonging to in the personnel application for reasons that cannot be attributed to her lack of diligence, so if the call had been made to the correct telephone number, owned by the plaintiff, she would have preference to access the appointment for a position.

Therefore, the Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Vigo has condemned the Department of Culture, Education, FP and Universities to pay the interim compensation equivalent to the three months of salary that she did not receive for not working between September and December 2022, that is, 12,802 euros. This sanction is only reduced to three months of the position because in March 2023 he was assigned another position.