A judge guarantees that commuting to work is part of the working day

He Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) recognizes in a judgment that the time spent commuting to work can be considered part of the working day.

In a ruling dated January 27 to which Efe has had access, the social court partially upholds the appeal of a worker against a ruling by the Madrid social court of July 2022.

Hired full-time in 2010, in 2012 the employee obtained a part-time shift to take care of her daughter, and in 2021 it was established that she would provide her services partly through teleworking and partly in person at two different, separate centers between them for more than 13 kilometers and one of them 27 kilometers from his home.

Faced with the impossibility of carrying out her tasks, the worker requested that she declare herself the right to reconcile your work and personal life given her status as parent, and she asked for transfer to one of the work centers, or that the already reduced working day be adapted as face-to-face work time and the rest as non-face-to-face and intended to compensate for the greater distance from the center to which was assigned.

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Otherwise, he requested a private transport bonus that amounted to a minimum of 155 euros per month; that he be paid compensation of 6,250 euros, for moral damages, as well as the existence of damages for having to use a private vehicle to go to work, for a value of 213 euros, also per month.

Travel time to the center where you had to go in person went from 35 to 80 minutes each way.

The social court rejected her claims and did not recognize her right to a change of center, since the one chosen by the worker did not have vacancies; He also considered that his rights did not include the calculation of his travels as work time, nor the payment of transportation expenses, “hence there is nothing to compensate.”

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In its sentence, the TSJM emphasizes that “there is” the right to reconcile personal and work life, “abstract law must be reasonable and proportionate both from the point of view of the worker and from that of the company”, so “it is reasonable to oppose this change of center”.

Although it rejects the plaintiff’s claims regarding the compensation that she must receive, which she establishes at 1,000 euros, and regarding the calculation of transportation costs, the TSJM concludes that for the computation of the worker’s current daily hours, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. , the 45 minute difference resulting in displacement must be taken into account.

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