The High Court of Justice of Galicia has dismissed in its entirety the appeal filed by the CIG, UGT, CGT and USO unions against the judgment issued in April by the Social Court of A Coruña by virtue of which it dismissed in its entirety the collective dispute lawsuit filed by the said unions against the furlough scheme applied by XEAL between September 2020 and February 2021. This scheme had been approved in February 2019 with majority union support.
The Social Court of La Coruña fully dismissed the unions' claimes and confirmed that the company had correctly and legally applied the furlough scheme, as it confirmed that there were lawful causes for its application, reiterating that the legal representation had all the necessary information during the negotiation of the furlough scheme, a fact which has now been fully ratified by the High Court of Justice of Galicia.
In the first instance judgment, the labor judge especially valued the fact that the company had sought the minimum impact in the application of the furlough scheme, delaying its application for over a year: "And what this judge appreciates is that this is what has happened in September 2020; there is clear evidence that the company has made determined efforts to reduce the intensity of what was agreed (not applying the furlough scheme in 2019 and delaying its application until September 2020 and with an affectation for the workers well below the maximum limit agreed in the work center in question) so that the business decision, in my view, cannot be declared null and void or unjustified; It is perfectly legal as it derives from the furlough scheme in force agreed with the social party, so there is no reason to reproach its actions in the specific terms contained in the lawsuit and on the basis of the facts that were the basis for the plaintiff's claim".
