Ben Pawlowski
IT is an all-too-common problem for many employees: waiting an age to finally receive your monthly salary – or perhaps never receiving it at all.
Thankfully, workers are protected under Spanish law by Article 29.3 of the Workers’ Statute, which states that employers who fail to pay the wages of their employees on time are liable to pay 10% annual interest on the amount due.
That law was upheld earlier this week by the Supreme Court, which ruled in favour of 33 doctors who brought a case against the Sant Joan de Deu Hospital in Martorell, a municipality west of Barcelona.
The hospital will have to pay €183,166.96 in wages and €89,758.84 to the group of doctors, whose payslips between 2015 and 2019 failed to include night-shifts or extra weekend pay.
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Executives from the hospital, which specialises in pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, attempted to wriggle out of the payment by claiming the case satisfied a narrow exception where the application of 10% statutory interest does not apply.
If the employer is legally barred from making payment due to a binding public regulation, such as a law restricting salary increases in public institutions, then an exception would apply.
Hospital leaders claimed public budget laws prevented the payments from being made.
But this was rejected by the Supreme Court, who stated that the existence of legal spending limits does not equal a prohibition to pay what is owed, and thus interest is applied.
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