Woman dismissed for excessive mobile phone use at work reinstated

The Superior Court of Justice of Valencia has declared null and void the dismissal of a pregnant woman for excessive use of her mobile phone at work and forces the company to reinstate her and pay the salary lost since the date of dismissal.

This new ruling annuls the dismissal by considering that their fundamental rights have been violated and, therefore, is contrary to the ruling issued in the first instance by the Social Court No. 8 of Valencia, in which the dismissal was declared appropriate.

“It is evident that the company does not prove that the faults attributed to it in the dismissal letter are of sufficient severity and culpability, such as a decrease in performance or that a work order has been neglected on a certain date,” says Amparo Gimeno, lawyer for the affected person.

The regional court identified several irregularities in the company’s initial decision. First, the act of dismissal did not correspond proportionally to the alleged excessive use of the telephone. Furthermore, the dismissal letter did not adequately detail the facts that justified such a drastic measure.

For her part, the worker had notified both the company and her colleagues of her pregnancy prior to the dismissal and had a medical assessment as a “particularly sensitive person due to pregnancy, carried out in order to determine what workplace conditions could present a risk and propose preventive measures,” as detailed in the ruling.

“We understand that this ruling represents one more step in the protection of the rights of workers, especially pregnant workers, against the company’s sanctioning and disciplinary power of article 58 of the Workers’ Statute, which includes offences and sanctions”, denounces the lawyer.

According to Gimeno, when the dismissal was declared null and void, the worker has been readmitted to the company, in another department but in a position of the same category and with the same conditions that she held before the dismissal. “After all the work that the procedure has involved, we consider that justice has been done for our client.”

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