The Supreme Court determines that the abolition of the food supplement implies a change in working conditions

He Supreme Court found that the unilateral abolition of the allowance for a hot meal for workers entailed a significant change in working conditions. In a judgment unifying the doctrine of June 20, the Social Chamber supported Aena’s appeal against the May 2020 judgment of the Supreme Court Xustiza de Galicia (TSXG).

The Supreme Court agrees with the workers in their lawsuit, although it upholds the appeal Aena because the employees claimed after the appropriate period of 20 days had expired.

The airport management company unilaterally terminated food support staff in the afternoon shift, about which all workers were informed in writing in September 2012. The price of the meal was 5.37 euros, of which the workers paid 1.20, and the company took over the rest of 4.17 euros.

This company’s decision to end the midday meal subsidy it paid afternoon shift workers “undoubtedly represents A significant change in working conditions, inasmuch as it implies the definitive cancellation of the social benefit they enjoyed until then,” the court concludes. And he adds that this is also a compensation of “no small economic significance, in the amount of 4.17 euros per day”.

Workers, the Supreme Court reveals, thus lose the company’s economic assistance of a “substantial” amount, which implies “an essential change in the employment relationship because it definitely and permanently affects such a decisive element as the amount of compensation, without considering any compensation or compensation from the employer.

Once this premise is established, the judicial challenge of this business activity must be carried out through a procedural modality specially provided for that purpose and within the “inexorable statute of limitations” that this implies, warns the Supreme Court. After the entry into force of the Law on Social Competence, the “controversial” validity period of twenty days for contesting essential changes in working conditions, it is applicable in any case, adds the sentence, in which it is emphasized that “the action carried out in the lawsuit had to be subject to the above-mentioned statute of limitations in any case”. For this reason, according to the company’s request, the Supreme Court annuls the TSXG verdict which confirmed the previous verdict of the Social Court No. 4 in A Coruña by which Aena was forced to compensate the injured workers in amounts between 850 and 2500 euros.