The ayuntamiento of Garrucha has been ordered by a judge to honour a pay rise approved by the previous council over a year ago, the ayuntamiento has five days to appeal against the decision.
In the last town hall elections in May 2007 the Partido Popular (PP) beat the socialist party (PSOE) by seven seats to six in Garrucha. In a council meeting held in the days before the elections the socialist ayuntamiento approved a motion to award a pay rise of some 350 euros a month to its manual workers, backdated to January 2007 and to come into effect in June the same year. The new PP council refused to honour the pay rise claiming that irregularities were committed in its approval as this was done without reports from the council secretary or auditor. The judge ruled that according to law the lack of these reports did not affect the legitimacy of the agreement with the workers. Another argument of the ayuntamiento was that there was an illegal clause in the agreement referring to compulsory retirement, again the judge did not agree with the council's lawyer stating that one illegal clause did not nullify the entire agreement, adding that the council should take steps to rectify that specific clause.
The judges decision means that the ayuntamiento will have to pay each of the fifteen workers affected around 6,300 euros in back pay, a total of more than ninety thousand euros.
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