Justice annuls the dismissal of a laboratory supervisor who was changed by a person with out justification | Economy | EUROtoday

The courtroom has declared invalid for discrimination based mostly on intercourse the dismissal of a director of a pharmaceutical laboratory, whose place was stuffed by a male colleague, who was transferred from one other space of ​​the group. The Superior Court of Justice of Galicia (TSJG) has issued a ruling by which the dismissal of this employee is invalid, contemplating that the corporate violated her rights by giving her place to a person, with out the place being stuffed via a clear course of that assured compliance with the precept of equality. In this manner, the Social Court has ordered the reinstatement of the worker with the fee of the salaries not obtained for the reason that dismissal.

The decision, issued on December 10 and to which EL PAÍS has had entry, concludes that there was no actual goal trigger that justified the dismissal. This is a ruling that units a precedent because of the scarce jurisprudence on the annulment of dismissals as a result of discrimination based mostly on intercourse, in response to authorized sources, who emphasize that it has “an important effect for the workers of any company.”

The director (space supervisor within the gross sales community within the south of Galicia) developed her profession within the defendant pharmaceutical laboratory for greater than a decade and, particularly, she had been within the place for 9 years when her contract was terminated, in March 2024. According to the factual background of the sentence, the dismissal was for goal causes, however there isn’t any reproach concerning her efficiency or failure to satisfy aims. On the opposite, the plaintiff had frequently obtained variable incentives linked to outcomes.

The pharmaceutical firm justified the termination by the necessity for a “change in leadership style” and to provide the place a special profile, with new powers attributed to the “manager“However, the TSJG does not give credibility to this explanation because the new profile was not defined until months after the dismissal, nor was there a prior comparative evaluation, since at no time was it clarified why whoever held the position until then did not meet the requirements.

The board, represented by the labor law firm Zeres Abogados, appealed the dismissal before the courts of Vigo, whose Social Court number 4 partially upheld the claim last February. This first instance body declared the dismissal unfair, but considered that the legal requirements to annul it, as requested by the plaintiff, were not met. Thus, it ordered the laboratory to choose between the immediate reinstatement of the worker under the same conditions as before the dismissal, with the payment of salaries not collected during the processing of the entire procedure; or to the definitive termination of the employment relationship, plus the payment of compensation of 98,000 euros. However, the worker went ahead and appealed to the Galician Superior Court of Justice to annul her dismissal as discriminatory.

Connection to a previous claim

The magistrates of the Social Chamber have revoked the first instance ruling and have agreed with the board. The recent ruling handed down at the beginning of December, which is not yet final and can be appealed to the Supreme Court, indicates that the dismissal was not only discriminatory based on sex, but also violated fundamental rights, such as the guarantee of indemnity, which protects workers from suffering retaliation.

For the court, there is a “temporal interconnection” between the dismissal and a earlier declare that the board made just a few weeks earlier than the dismissal, associated to the annual bonus for 2023 aims that the corporate denied him for having been on medical depart for greater than three months in mentioned 12 months. According to the judges, the laboratory couldn’t show that the dismissal was as a result of causes unrelated to the grievance and that the temporal proximity of each occasions was causality.

On the other hand, the High Court has approached dismissal from the perspective of gender equality. According to the ruling, in the laboratory’s commercial and sales network, management positions are occupied mainly by men: the two area heads are men and of the 28 area managers, 25 are men and three are women. For this reason, it is understood that the departure of the board of directors and its replacement by a man, without a transparent procedure or known objective criteria, “deepens the gender hole that exists in these administration positions, growing the variety of males in comparison with girls, violating article 14 of the Spanish Constitution, which prohibits direct or oblique discrimination.”

The company defended that positions of trust can be filled “at free will” and “without publicizing them.” In response, the court confirms that there is no obligation to announce vacancies, but draws attention to the fact that the position of the substitute was advertised, not doing the same in the case of a position that became vacant with the dismissal of the plaintiff.

Likewise, it points out that this power of discretionary selection is not limited, since it must respect the principle of equality, especially when there is such a pronounced gender imbalance. Furthermore, it points out that this decision is contradictory to the group’s own equality plan—in force at the time of the events—which establishes as its objective “promoting greater participation of workers whose sex is less represented at different levels of the organization.”

As a consequence of the annulment of the dismissal, the courtroom orders the rapid reinstatement of the employee to her place, with a fee of roughly 10,000 euros akin to the salaries not obtained for the reason that date of dismissal, by which, for its calculation, the 14,000 euros of the unpaid bonus are acknowledged; along with compensation of 20,000 euros in damages.