Points out that it would be discriminatory to consider training an automatic merit regardless of the work to be done
MADRID, 6 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Supreme Court (TS) has established that “academic overqualification” cannot always be an advantage when it comes to getting a job, explaining that it should only be a determining factor when it is an essential requirement for the job to which you aspire , warning that otherwise “discriminatory treatment” could be incurred.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TS has thus answered an appeal filed by an usher from the Congress of Deputies, an architect by training, who did not obtain the position of maintenance manager in the Lower House, something that he attributed to the fact that he did not he had correctly assessed his academic qualification.
The usher was third, with 34.695 points compared to 35.73 for the colleague who got the job. In his opinion, it was not taken into account that he is an architect, that he worked as such for a town hall of a municipality in Cuenca and that he took several courses –one on technical inspection, another on foundations, and the last one on occupational hazards- -.
The appeal also focused on the applicant who was victorious, complaining that “the courses on gender equality should not have been valued” that the latter had taken.
The Supreme Court rejects all these arguments assuming those put forward by the Congress of Deputies. Thus, it clarifies that the fact of being an architect “does not automatically give one the right to (…) presume that this academic and professional qualification necessarily entails a greater suitability for the correct performance of a position for which that qualification is not required.”
“Succinctly said, what could be called ‘academic overqualification’ cannot be an obstacle for those who possess it, but neither can it be an additional advantage that can be invoked in any situation,” he maintains.
The magistrates warn that, “if the latter were done, it would fall into what the lawyer of the Cortes Generales rightly points out: discriminatory treatment towards those applicants who, meeting all the conditions of the body to which they belong and necessary to occupy the summoned position, have no other academic merits”.
Regarding the specific case, the high court understands that the Lower House has correctly assessed the merits in relation to the scale set to award the position because “this requires that it be an ‘equivalent position'”.
“Without denying that the functions of an architect can sometimes consist of building maintenance, it is far from evident that they are those of the usher of the Cortes Generales who occupies the position of manager in the Maintenance Unit, especially if one takes into account account that said official has hierarchical superiors of two successive levels, to whom corresponds the technical direction”, he specifies.
To this it adds that “in this case no university degree is required, that the programs of two of the alleged courses were not provided, and that the one related to occupational risk prevention was not carried out in an official or approved center”.
Likewise, it makes him ugly that he now charges –in court– against the assessment of the merits of the winning candidate when he did not question it in administrative proceedings, having the opportunity to raise it there.
“It is one thing to maintain that one’s own merits have ceased to be assessed, and another to affirm that the competitor’s merits have been incorrectly assessed. Furthermore, in administrative proceedings the appellant said that he had no objections to the way in which it had been applied the scale” to the one who came first, emphasizes the TS.
