A León City Hall official who for years assumed his own work and that of two sick colleagues must be compensated with 150,000 euros, as ordered by the Contentious-Administrative Court number 3 of León in a judgment in which he criticizes the Local Corporation for its “passivity” in the face of this persistent situation of “overwork”.
The sentence, against which there is an appeal, partially supports the request of the municipal employee, who promoted a property liability action against the Town Hall arguing that for years he took on “an amount of work greater than his share” due to the departure of his colleagues and the resulting vacancies.
The official asked the Court to recognize the right to total compensation of 347,082 euroswhich included remuneration for the functions performed by him and compensation for moral damage.
The sentence grants him 149,858.34 euros taking as a reference the amount of salary and additional remuneration for jobs, but excluding the productivity supplement and taking into account the fact that the general finance law prohibits claiming amounts dating back more than four years.
Two permanent vacancies
The complainant is a career civil servant at León City Hall who holds the position of legal advisor.
This department has three positions for lawyers. But one of them resigned due to temporary incapacity (which subsequently became permanent, ultimately leading to the employee’s death) since January 2014. The position was not filled at any time, neither temporarily nor permanently .
The other lawyer experienced three periods of temporary incapacity of several months each, during which no action was taken either.
This employee then went to the special services, so the plaintiff remained the only lawyer in the legal department.
In 2020, a general administration technician arrived, but she held the position for less than eight months.
In March 2022, the city council announced the two vacant secondment lawyer positions. There was no request.
When the plaintiff became temporarily incapacitated and there was no longer anyone in the legal department, a pool of lawyers was urgently created and two temporary workers have been appointed which have been providing services since May 2022 and currently remain so.
For the plaintiff, since 2014 and, even more so, since the departure of the second lawyer in March 2020, his workload “has multiplied to unaffordable levels”, do the work of three people alone“.
The lawsuit emphasized that this situation was communicated to municipal officials, both verbally and in writing, “but the Administration has not resolved the situation created, despite the long time that has passed since the physical, psychological and moral damage“, he alleged.
“Continuing damage”
The Court confirmed that “we are faced with a case of continuing damage, which begins from the moment when the positions occupied by the lawyers who ceased their activity have not been filled”.
According to him, This harmful situation “was generated directly by the passivity of the Town Hall de León, who could have ended it at any time and did not do so.
Regarding the Corporation’s allegation that the plaintiff “voluntarily” assumed the work of the two other lawyers, the judgment indicates that this statement “violates all rationality”, since the manager provided details – not contradicted – about the municipal dispute growing in all jurisdictions. and the high workload, quantitative and qualitative, represented by the defense during the León City Hall trial.
“The defendant does not explain how the official could have ‘rejected’ this overload of work, given the inexorable expiration of peremptory procedural deadlines, the requests which must be responded to under penalty of foreclosure, the hearings and tests to which it is necessary to attend the sentences which must be studied for the purposes of appeal or cassation, in addition to the daily exercise, formal or informal, of the consultative function inherent to legal advice, which constitutes a critical function in any public or organization. private and as such must be treated,” the judicial resolution states.
The Court also recalls that “abandonment of service, as well as the fact of not voluntarily taking charge of the tasks or functions entrusted to them” constitute a disciplinary offense.
Administrative passivity
“Before that abnormal and prolonged situation, known to the Administration, predictable and avoidable“, no real and effective measure has been adopted over a long period which can be measured in years”, adds the judgment.
Furthermore, currently the two legal vacancies are occupied by temporary civil servants “and the City Hall has given no explanation as to the reasons, if any, which prevent the regular allocation, by career civil servants, of positions which” they have appeared several times in successive “public job offers”.
The Court concludes that there was an abnormal functioning of the Administration, which was “repeatedly and diligently” warned by the official to his superiors, “who ignored these warnings”.
This resulted in the “de facto” imposition on the lawyer of an “excessive and unbearable” workloadwhich generates compensable harm “not so much for specific physical or psychological suffering, which, although it can reasonably be assumed to be related to work stress, has not been proven in terms of direct causation”, but for the violation of the individual right of each employed public to benefit from effective protection in terms of security and
health at work.
“We consider proven the permanent and continuous situation of excessive work, causally linked to the prolonged inattention and inactivity of the City Hall in filling vacant positions, and to the correlative lack of protection of the civil servant”, he concludes.
