The just cause for dismissal ignores the criminal relevance of the fact when common decency has been violated
Case Law
In this case, the company fired the head of staff who, motivated by punitive intent towards an employee subordinate, who treated him with a “special surveillance”, psychologically intimidating and threatening dismissal, with meticulous control of the hours time stamped. In the eyes of the immediate superior (the one who was fired), the employee under surveillence was “guilty” of having turned to a union to challenge a disciplinary sanction, however unfounded.
The Court of Appeal (Court of Appeal of Milan, 29 February 2016) considered legitimate the dismissal, regardless of the criminal law of conduct adopted by the head of personnel. In fact, given the autonomy of the civil court over the criminal court, the conduct in question constitutes a violation of common decency, likely to seriously undermine the trust of the employer in its own employees, given the same role performed.
For these reasons, it is not even important that the worker renounced the complaint, perhaps for fear of confronting his superior. In this regard, the Court of Appeal found that – in the case of indictable offenses in a lawsuit – it would be
