A cook at El Corte Inglés in Spain, after being fired, had his disciplinary dismissal considered unfounded by the court, after the company accused him of consuming sweets without paying during work. According to the Spanish portal, which says it is based on sentence 2864/2024, the worker had been part of the company’s staff since March 1992, had an open-ended full-time contract and earned around 2,300 euros per month.
The worker worked in the prepared dishes section and was fired in April 2023. According to the same source, the company accused him of consuming 7 croissants, 6 chocolate donuts, 5 xuxos and a bread bar without prior payment, in addition to non-compliance with internal hygiene rules and handling of products intended for sale.
The commercial network based the dismissal on the violation of internal rules that prohibit the consumption of items without payment and classified the conduct as disobedience and violation of contractual good faith. This framework is based on article 54 of the Workers’ Statute and the Collective Agreement of Large Almacenes, which treats the breach of contractual good faith and the abuse of trust in the performance of work as very serious misconduct.
But the case ended up having another outcome in court. According to Noticias Trabajo, the Juzgado de lo Social n.º 1 of Girona declared the dismissal unfounded and the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia then confirmed this decision, rejecting the company’s appeal. The court valued the testimonial evidence according to which it was customary for workers to consume small amounts of food during the workday without disciplinary consequences, concluding that there was prior tolerance on the part of the company.
The decision also highlighted that one cannot go from a normally tolerated practice to the maximum sanction of dismissal without clear prior notice to workers. The judges also understood that no intentional actions or attempts at concealment by the cook were demonstrated and that the economic value of the products consumed was reduced, factors that weakened the seriousness of the infraction.
On a legal level, this means that the company is not automatically obliged to pay compensation as the only solution. Under article 56 of the Workers’ Statute, when the dismissal is declared unfounded, the employer has to choose between readmitting the worker or paying the corresponding legal compensation. In the case described by Noticias Trabajo, the value fixed in the first instance was R$68,876.81.
The case thus once again highlighted a criterion repeated in Spanish labor jurisprudence: the sanction of disciplinary dismissal requires serious and culpable non-compliance, and the existence of previous corporate tolerance can be decisive in ruling out the proportionality of the most severe measure.
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