“Simply unpresentable”. This is how the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) defines the dismissal letter used by a marble company to dismiss a worker.
The reason? “In the height of negligenceit is indicated, in the second paragraph, that the company is dedicated to the retail trade of clothes in specialized establishments, which suggests that a dismissal letter from another company was copied, that the template was downloaded from the Internet or its writing was entrusted to so-called artificial intelligence“, criticizes a recent decision of the TSJC, to which EL ESPAÑOL-Invertia had access.
But this is by no means the only paragraph that berates the company. Since 2021, the worker has worked as a marble worker at Hugo Giró SL. In the controversial dismissal letter, dated September 30, 2022, the company’s management attributes to the employee —in a “generic” way, according to the decision—A disciplinary offense due to a voluntary reduction in performance.
First of all, the mistake of confusing the work of the company —the company is in the marble business and the letter says it sells clothing—it already turns out “particularly relevant” for the TSJC.
“Proof that there was no reason to terminate the complainant’s employment contract”, conclude the judges of the Social Court, confirming the previous decision of the Social Court, which declared the dismissal null and void and forces the company to reinstate the worker or compensate him.
This first judgment annulled the company’s decision to dismiss the worker by finding “discrimination due to disability”. Because? As the TSJC now recalls, the employee suffered two brief temporary disabilities. The first, lasting a single day, between July 28 and 29. The second, for half a month only (between September 13 and 26, 2022). Four days after his last release, the company throws him onto the street.
Shortly before, in June 2022, the employee’s medical examination had classified him as “fit with restrictions”. From now on, he recommends limiting your “exposure to silica dust without respiratory protection equipment”.
“Instead of making these minimal adaptations, which happened just three months after obtaining the certificate [médico]and four days after the last temporary incapacity procedure, the complainant was dismissed,” the judgment criticizes.
Then, the magistrates of the Catalan TSJ consider this data as “a powerful chronological element which makes it possible to link the dismissal to the situation of the
worker”.
“These are well-founded indications of a violation of the fundamental right not to be discriminated against. And once these have been verified (…), it was up to the company to refute them by providing an objective justification and reasonable, sufficiently proven”, for the dismissal and its proportionality. Load which, obviously, has not increased since (…) We are facing dismissal without any reason and without reasonable explanation.“, concludes the resolution.
Void because discriminatory
On the other hand, the court also criticizes the fact that the company “did not even make any particular efforts” to try to assume unfair dismissal “which would not cost very much, given the short seniority of the worker, less than a year”. This was not the case and the company opted for disciplinary dismissal. It is, for dismiss the worker without granting him any compensation.
Once the worker was diagnosed with this illness, “what the company should have done (…) was to adapt the workplace to these restrictions, which, moreover, were easily overcome, by simply providing respiratory protection equipment against the virus. which, on the other hand, should be accessible to any worker exposed to this substance”.
His illness places the worker “in the sphere of workers particularly sensitive to work-related risks”. His temporary incapacities “suggest that he was beginning to develop a respiratory illness which, although slow to progress, can lead to disability“. Therefore, the conditions which surrounded his dismissal presuppose, in the opinion of the TSJC, “its qualification as null and void due to discrimination”.
