Fired a worker in Lleida for justified intermittent leave after the Constitutional ruling
- Absences must reach 20% of working days in two consecutive months.
- The farewell was on medical leave several times during March and April.
- UGt denounces that this “shameful” business practice is becoming widespread.
The company Atento Teleservicios has dismissed for justified intermittent dismissals a worker from its center of Lleida after being published at the end of October the Constitutional Court ruling that endorses the termination of a labor contract for objective reasons if there are justified absences, even if they are justified intermittent, UGT has reported.
Specifically, the management of Atento – a company specialized in call center management – has dismissed the president of the company committee of its center in Lleida and representative of the UGT of Catalonia using article 52.d of the Statute of Workers, that justifies the objective dismissal of a worker who lacks 20% or more working days in his workplace justifiably for two months.
The union recalls that the October 16 ruling of the Constitutional Court dismissed the question of unconstitutionality filed against this section of article 52. The dismissed worker was on medical leave several times during the months of March and April and her absences were justified.
“We regret that this sentence supports the dismissal for repeatedly missing the job, even if there is a justified cause, and that it is inadmissible for the constitutional rights of workers”
“We regret that this ruling (of the TC) supports the dismissal for repeatedly missing the job, even if there is a justified cause, and that it is inadmissible for the constitutional rights of workers,” says UGT.
The union has denounced that Atento Lleida uses “this unacceptable cause of dismissal to dispense with a representative of the workers who for months denounced the derivation of the labor rights suffered by the more than 200 workers in the center of Lleida.”
The Deputy Secretary General and Sector Coordinator of the UGT-FeSMC of les Terres de Lleida, Margarita Pascual, explained on Thursday that the staff of Atento will concentrate tomorrow at the door of the Lleida work center in protest of the dismissal of the worker .
Generalized practice?
The Federation of Services, Mobility and Consumption of UGT (FeSMC-UGT) has issued a statement to denounce that in recent weeks it is detecting that this “shameful” business practice is becoming widespread.
“From UGT we demand, on the one hand, the immediate cessation of these practices of objective dismissal for justified absenteeism (covered by the labor reform of the PP), as well as the readmission of workers who have been dismissed in recent months for this cause, “claims the Federation.
Alarm among family doctors
The Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC) has expressed its “alarm” before the sentence. In this regard, he recalled the effect of job insecurity on patients and the “enormous prevalence” of chronic pathologies “frequently incompatible with the performance of work activity when they become more acute”, so he insisted on the “alarm” before this Constitutional positioning.
Also before the “law that makes it possible”, especially when, he stressed, the percentages provided in the law “are passed to whole numbers and working hours.” “20% of the two-month days can be only nine days, while 5% of a year are eleven days of work,” he added, and then pointed out that an ankle sprain “means the maximum of casualties for a year and pneumonia can now be cause for dismissal. “