A former CaixaBank employee must return 25,985.52 euros to CaixaBank after the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra confirmed that these were improper charges having received the amount of the Special Agreement with Social Security while he was already retired. In this sense, the court agrees with the banking entity when considering that there was an incompatibility, since the pre-retirement agreement lost its meaning when accessing the pension.
As stated in the ruling, this worker took early retirement in June 2012 through an ERE made by the former Banca Cívica (now CaixaBank). The agreement was that the bank paid him the cost of his Social Security monthly so that he could maintain his contribution level through a special agreement. This way they ensured that their future pension would not be cut by stopping work early, a commitment that the bank maintained, in principle, until the worker turned 63.
Given this situation, this worker and early retiree decided to access the voluntary early retirement on July 6, 2019, aged 61. However, CaixaBank later realized that the former employee was still collecting Social Security contributions from the company despite having already retired, something that is incompatible according to the agreement. For this reason, he sent him a burofax demanding “the return of the payments that the Entity has made to him as compensation for the cost of the Special Agreement with Social Security, since the retirement benefit has been recognized.” When they could not reach an understanding, they went to court.
The payment of the Special Agreement is incompatible with the pension
After going through the Social Court No. 2 of Pamplona, the matter reached the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra, which ended up ruling in favor of CaixaBank. The Court determined that the former employee incurred a b, violating the regulations that establish that acquiring pensioner status automatically extinguishes that agreement.
The ruling indicates that “…the payment by the company of the cost corresponding to the Special Agreement with Social Security only makes sense as long as the worker’s pre-retirement situation is maintained and with the limit of 63 years.” The magistrates are blunt when they remember that the purpose of that money was to maintain contributions until the moment of withdrawal, so “…if such a situation is accessed before, the payment of the accruals has no cause.”
It does not prescribe a year because it is an “improvement of Social Security”
In this ruling, the key is that the defendant’s error was trying to claim that the debt had expired based on the Workers’ Statute, believing that it was compensation derived from the employment contract (which expires after one year). Despite this, the Chamber remembers that what is relevant is the nature of the payment within the framework of the General Social Security Law, regulations that expressly regulate voluntary improvements in protective action.
In the words of the resolution, “the action brought by the plaintiff entity is a claim derived from a payment to cover the cost of a Special Social Security Agreement, which constitutes an improvement in Social Security benefits. Therefore, the period to exercise the claim is five years in accordance with article 43 of the LGSS.”
Therefore, the Court understands that the early retiree improperly collected this aid during the months after his effective retirement. The ruling concludes that the claim “becomes in accordance with the law since, through it, the restitution of amounts unduly paid is sought for lack of cause or reason during the period after the disappearance of the reason for payment, that is, during the period after access to retirement.”