New jug of cold water on the temporary employment regulation file (ERTE) that Ryanair intended to apply to its workers in Girona and the Canary Islands bases of Tenerife, Lanzarote and Las Palmas. The Fourth Chamber of the Supreme Court has confirmed the nullity of this file, ratifying the arguments that in its day put on the table the National Court and the Ministry of Labor.
In a judgment dated September 22, and the meaning of which the General Council of the Judiciary announced this Monday, the High Court considers the administrative decision adopted by Labor to be correct. The department headed by Yolanda Díaz considered at the time that the causes of force majeure due to the covid that the Irish airline alleged to request the inclusion of more than 200 workers in an ERTE were not present. The Supreme Court confirms the procedural defects on the part of the company, which did not notify the unions of the list of those affected, and also considers that there was fraud of the law, the same argument that the Labor Inspection used in its report.
The events date back to April 2020, when the National Court declared void an ERE (employment regulation file) for which Ryanair had collectively and definitively dismissed, before the start of the pandemic, 224 workers from its bases in Canary Islands and Girona. The ruling required the reinstatement of employees. The company did not appeal the sentence and complied with it. But along with the readmission, he already requested an ERTE in May claiming that he could not operate because of the covid. The vast majority of the workers included in that file (194 out of 206) were people affected by the null ERE.
The airline also requested that the new temporary dismissal file be applied retroactively from March, when the pandemic arrived in Spain and the Government opened that possibility. The file was approved in principle by administrative silence, in a context in which numerous requests of this type were received and Trabajo did not have enough time to respond to them all on time. But the USO union filed an appeal to appeal that decision and at the same time filed a lawsuit in the National High Court.
In administrative proceedings, the analysis by the Ministry of Labor concluded that the ERTE was committing a fraud of the law precisely because of the retroactivity that it required. The company, the labor inspection report pointed out, was trying to save part of the wages that it had to pay to its employees as a result of the ruling that forced their reinstatement. If the ERTE is accepted retroactively, that cost would fall largely on the Social Security coffers. The same argument was appreciated by the National Court and has now been ratified by the Supreme Court.