The Supreme Court prohibits disciplinary dismissals if the company does not give the worker the opportunity to defend himself

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling that affects all disciplinary dismissals that companies sign from now on: it will not be a valid dismissal if the company has not opened a procedure so that the worker can fight the accusations against him. The social chamber changes its own doctrine to establish that “the employer must offer the worker the possibility of defending himself against the charges made against him”, applying the regulations of the International Labor Organization Convention in force in Spain since 1982.

The judges have changed their doctrine for the future after studying the case of a professor of theater theory and director of the School of Dramatic Art of the Balearic Islands, today known as Fundació per als Estudis Superiors de Música i Arts Escèniques. It was in 2020 when the inspection learned that there were accusations against the teacher of having harassed several students in that and previous courses with a letter from several dozen students.

A letter in which the students denounced, among other things, that this teacher sent them friend requests on Instagram, proposed tutoring after hours and gave them “intimidating looks,” moving on to physical approaches “especially of the upper part of the body.” or to comments such as “what a short skirt”, “you look very pretty today” or “you have a very sensual look”, thereby generating situations of “discomfort”, “fear” and “guilt”.

The dismissal letter from this Balearic public Foundation arrived in March 2021 echoing these accusations. It was then that the teacher went to court to fight his dismissal: the court ruled in favor of the Foundation but the TSJ of the Balearic Islands declared that it had been an unfair dismissal and that he had the right to be compensated with more than 64,000 euros. The Supreme Court now orders that the court repeat its first sentence.