A judge has recognized the right of a flight attendant to early retirement without penalty in a pioneering ruling, highlights the USO union, since the profession of cabin crew is not included in the list of painful and dangerous professions with access to this measure. The court recognizes a reduction coefficient of 30%, which allows “your retirement to be brought forward three years for every 10 years worked,” the union explains.
“This ruling has a significant impact on the group of cabin crew, more than 30,000 in Spain, as it represents a first step towards applying reduction coefficients for retirement,” celebrates the union. The judicial resolution is not final, it can still be appealed by Social Security, something that is taken for granted by USO, who believe that the case can reach the Supreme Court.
The worker is a Cantabrian flight attendant residing in Tenerife who in June 2023 initiated a procedure before Social Security for the recognition of the reducing coefficient, which was denied. “A year later, a lawsuit was filed by USO-Cantabria, with the Social Court No. 4 of Tenerife issuing a ruling upholding the lawsuit in its entirety,” explains USO.
Stewardesses are not on the list of difficult professions
Social Security once again justified its refusal to recognize early retirement without penalty in the courts, mainly because the Royal Decree of 1986 which reduces the retirement age of flight personnel for aerial work “does not mention flight crew members.” Passenger Cabin.”
This is a decree that recognizes reducing coefficients for early retirement for categories such as pilot, second pilot, aircraft mechanic, navigator, aerial photography operator, technological means operator, aerial photographer and aerial camera operator, among others. However, it does not include cabin crew (TPC), the majority of whom are women.
Despite not being on this list, the magistrate recognizes the right of this complainant stewardess to a reducing coefficient of 0.30, to anticipate her retirement without pension penalty.
Gender discrimination
“Not understanding it this way would actually mean not only direct discrimination because it is the same aerial work activity carried out by other categories, but it would also be indirect discrimination based on gender,” the ruling states, citing a previous resolution of the court of Social 34 of Madrid, December 2023.
This gender discrimination is justified “as it is a well-known fact, and therefore exempt from the need for proof, that the profession of stewardess, even though it is currently called ‘cabin crew’, has been traditional.” and mostly carried out by women, as the plaintiff has maintained in its lawsuit,” the judicial resolution continues.
USO has welcomed the judicial resolution and reiterates that the union considers this exclusion of cabin crew members from the reduction coefficients for retirement to be unfair, which has also led to a “contentious-administrative appeal to include the cabin crew profession of passengers in this catalog of painful and dangerous professions.”
The latest pension reform, approved this Wednesday by Congress, addresses precisely a new procedure to include painful and dangerous professions with the right to early retirement, which social agents are still developing with the Ministry of Social Security.
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