Now they serve as a reason for disciplinary dismissals

The return to the office, announced by Amazon in September, raised suspicions about the company’s real intentions, with some employees accusing the company of creating a hostile environment to force them to resign and keep their severance pay, which a manager later denied. myself.

However, companies have found other, more creative ways to trim the millions of dollars in layoffs recorded between 2022 and 2023. The one that has grown the most: disciplinary dismissals, in which employees commit some “serious misconduct.” “”, which entails the immediate dismissal of employees without the right to compensation.

He course of action. Financial Times a month ago it was published that Meta fired 20 highly qualified employees for exchanging food and nutrition vouchers intended for their daily maintenance for wine and household cleaning products. According to the company, this behavior violated the company’s ethical policies. This served as a reasoned basis for his dismissal in the form of a sanction.

Consulting firm EY used a similar argument to fire a group of employees who took two online training courses simultaneously in an attempt to improve productivity while multitasking. This action allowed the consulting firm to enforce its ethics policy, which specifically prohibits such practices.

Strict adherence to rules. One of the most recent examples of this practice was the TSJ decision of Castilla-La Mancha v. Mercadona, which declared it inadmissible to fire an employee who violated a clause of his collective agreement by eating a croquette that had already been thrown away. sale to the public. According to Mercadona, the employee committed a very serious offense, which justifies the dismissal of an employee who had worked for the company for 16 years.

The verdict itself indicated the disproportionate sanction and, although guilt was admitted, it did not find justification for the maximum sanction against the employee.

Increase in disciplinary dismissals. These types of dismissals are justified under the classification of disciplinary dismissals caused by tightening business policies and culture. According to data published Economistthese types of layoffs already account for 54% of membership losses due to layoffs, with a total of 430,716 employees laid off for this reason. This represents an increase of 7.2% this year.

“From the employee’s point of view, he may have been given unrealistic deadlines, excessive work pressure or given unclear instructions about what is expected of him, while the employer will feel that excessive use of benefits or shortcuts undermines his system by cheating on test or lying. about training…is a fundamental breach of trust,” said Leo Martin, CEO of GoodCorporation. Financial Times.

Judicial limit on disciplinary dismissals. The Supreme Court has just issued a ruling that changes the criteria that the High Court’s Social Chamber has based on Article 7 of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 158 since 1986. This specific statement: “This should not be taken for granted. . terminating an employee’s employment for reasons related to his conduct or performance before he has been given an opportunity to defend himself against the charges brought against him, unless the employer cannot reasonably be required to give him such an opportunity.

The article provides this specific protection for union representatives, but with the new criterion it extends to all employees and the provision of a “preliminary hearing procedure” as a condition for the consideration of disciplinary dismissals. Those procedures that do not comply with this requirement will be considered unfair dismissals and therefore subject to compensation to the employee on dismissal.

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