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Mercadona applies a strict work discipline to its employees. Sometimes, breach some of these strict labor policies derive in disciplinary dismissals. A sanction that the courts have already described as “excessive and disproportionate” On other occasions.
The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid has declared inadmissible the dismissal of a Mercadona employee after being accused of consuming a beer in your rest time. Therefore, the supermarket must compensate the employee who, during her breakfast pause, ate a chicken sandwich accompanied by a beer.
What happened? As reflected in The judgment issued For the TSJM, the farewell employee occupied the functions of manager to since 2001 in the section “Ready to eat”, with an annual salary of 28,006.21 euros and was fired on June 29, 2023 through a communication in which they claimed disciplinary causes.
The key events date back to June 21, 2023, when the person responsible for her turn informed that the employee allegedly smelled of alcohol when she presented to work. However, the coordinator verified that there was no such smell, but that the worker used a colony and chewed gum, something that, everything is said, also prohibited the employees of Mercadona. This served him for the person responsible to point out this detail.
On June 27 and during her break for breakfast, the employee bought “a cold beer and a chicken sandwich” and ate it inside her car inside the parking lot for the company’s employees. When he finished, he left his vehicle, he threw the containers to the paper and prepared to return to his position in the established deadlines.
The coordinator witnessed the scene, picked up the paper packaging and required the presence of the employee in his office. There, the employee acknowledged having drunk An Mahou beer of 50 CL with alcohol during your breakfast pause, signing a document in which the event was recorded. That same day, she was sent home before finishing her workday.
Disciplinary dismissal. In his allegation, Mercadona claimed that the behavior of the employee contravened the rules established in the Article 39.3 of your collective agreement On very serious offenses.
In its epigraph specifies: “Go to work or work under obvious symptoms of alcohol or drug o Consumption in the workplace of narcotic substances, or when the behaviors acquire the status of usual and negatively affect the performance of their work, as well as, they constitute a serious risk to the integrity of the working person or other people of the company or alien to this. “
Among the sanctions provided for very serious offenses that are included in article 40 of that same collective agreement, it is established that employees incurring this type of faults face: suspension of employment and salary of sixteen days up to sixty days or The dismissal. Among all possible sanctions, they opted for the most expeditious: The disciplinary dismissal.
The Judgment of the TSJM. In a first trial, Social Court No. 7 of Madrid determined that the worker’s behaviors did not justify the disciplinary dismissal. Judgment that Mercadona raised in a supplicatory to the TSJM that now ratifies it.
As stated in the sentence, the supermarket did not present conclusive evidence that the employee had been under the influence of alcohol or that her behavior affects her work performance, which led to declare dismissal inadmissible. The Court based its sentence to which the measure adopted by Mercadona did not respect the principles of proportionality and good contractual faith.
Disproportionate sanction. Mercadona argued that the worker had incurred a serious offense, adjusting to article 55 of the Workers Statutebut the judges concluded that the facts that were caused by dismissal were not serious enough as to justify a measure as extreme as dismissal. The Superior Court of Madrid recalled in his letter that the good faith must prevail both for the worker and for the employer, and that the analysis of any breach must consider not only the act in itself, but also the context and proportionality of the sanction.
The Court stressed that the decision to say goodbye must be reasonable and proportional, considering the seriousness of the behavior, its context and the human factor. He also stressed that there were no signs of drunkenness in the worker or prove that her alcohol consumption in rest time affects the performance of her functions, even if she used potentially dangerous tools such as knives or machinery. Therefore, the resource filed by Mercadona was dismissed.
Readmission or compensation. By declaring the inadmissibility of dismissal, Mercadona must now opt between two alternatives: readmit to the employee under the same working conditions prior to dismissal and pay the wages that he stopped receiving from the date of dismissal, or with the sum of 55,245.13 euros for compensation.
Although Juan Roig’s supermarket chain has not spoken about the meaning of his decision, his decisions in previous sentences suggest that Mercadona will choose to pay compensation since he does not usually readmit to the dismissed employees.
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