The Social Court of Santander has recognized a worker from the Ministry of Education of the Government of Cantabria her right to cancel four days of vacation that she had requested because they coincided with the general confinement of the state of alarm and to replace them with another vacation period, estimating thus a demand of the union section of UGT in the autonomic Executive.
The court ruling by magistrate Pablo Rueda says verbatim that if the worker "cannot leave her home due to forced confinement, it will not be a vacation, that period will not correspond to a legitimate and constitutional right to annual rest that every worker must have."
The judgment compares the case with the situation generated by a temporary incapacity when recalling that "when a worker falls into a situation of temporary incapacity before or during the enjoyment of the holidays, she retains the right to enjoy her holidays in a later period",.
"Obviously, all vacation enjoyment entails the possibility that the worker can rest from the annual provision of services for a third party, that is, they can move, leave their home, have their own leisure, visit relatives, play sports, etc. .. ", adds the sentence.
The worker requested four days of vacation at the beginning of the year, from April 13 to 17, and that after the state of alarm was decreed that lasted until June 21, she sent a WhatsApp on March 24 to cancel them for coinciding with the confinement general and reapplied on April 2.
Therefore, although the Government of Cantabria alleged in the trial that the center where the applicant works (a secondary school) had during the confinement "a minimal administrative activity" and that if she was not summoned to work it was because she was on vacation , the judge has considered that the worker "has no fault or responsibility in the fact that her vacation period coincided with a pandemic and, in addition, it is found that already on March 24 the worker warned that her vacation period would coincide with confinement, reminder that he reiterated on April 2; this procedure prevents classifying the plaintiff's work attitude as malicious or fraudulent ".
