Línea Directa right to dismiss sex pest worker

The Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has endorsed the decision to declare the dismissal of a Línea Directa employee appropriate. He was initially dismissed for sexually harassing a colleague to whom he made obscene comments and sent her pornographic videos.

According to the sentence, released through labour lawyer Caty Pou, the man had been working there since 1998 as a maintenance technician.

But he was removed from the company in April 2022 for breaching both the general collective agreement and the Workers’ Statute by committing very serious offences in relation to sexual harassment.

And, according to the dismissal letter, after the corresponding investigations, they detected that he had repeatedly maintained highly reprehensible behaviour over time with a cleaner from Eulen, who provided services within his facilities.

He made inappropriate comments in the professional field with sexual content, such as “it’s great that girls like you come to work in the company”, “how hot you are”, and made specific references to parts of her body.

Likewise, he referred to her with inappropriate expressions such as “cari”, at the same time that he made crude rhymes.

He would also look for her around the centre during his working day and send her WhatsApp messages from his personal cell phone without her consent or approval. He sent kissing emoticons, obscene comments and a significant amount of multimedia files, videos and images of highly pornographic content. The woman never responded to him.

In the dismissal letter they also told him that he required the worker to delete the chats because he had mistaken the person and did not want problems. It was Eulen’s head of services who alerted the insurer of the situation after the worker’s testimony.

The worker, dissatisfied with the dismissal, decided to go to court, however, the Social Court No. 22 did not agree with him, so he filed a petition before the higher TSJM.

Therefore, he requested that the proven facts be reviewed because the lower court ruling indicated that he had a particular work schedule, when in reality, his working pattern was different.

This had an influence in the sense that these messages, in his opinion, were sent outside of working hours. But the court rejected this argument because “sexual harassment extends to events that occur in the workplace or work environment” and not only to the fact that the events arise within the working day.

Furthermore, the magistrates recalled that “sexual harassment is considered violent conduct at work that can constitute an isolated incident or more systematic behaviours. They distinguish three types.

On the one hand, verbal sexual harassment, which includes obscene comments, sexual jokes, explanation of sexual fantasies, rumours about people’s sexual lives, rude comments about the body, explanation of sexual preferences.

The non-verbal, which includes making out-of-tune looks at the body, obscene gestures, letters, cell phone messages, notes, photos, drawings with sexual content. And the physical, with excessive proximity, pinching, seeking meetings alone, touching, massaging in an unwanted way.

In short, it has the purpose or has the effect of violating the dignity of a person, particularly when an intimidating, degrading or offensive environment is created.

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