Specificity, immediacy and immutability: the three fundamental requirements for disciplinary objection

The Court of Cassation, with judgement No. 19103 dated 1 August 2017, confirmed the unlawfulness of disciplinary dismissal ordered to an employee responsible for having provided confidential information about the company for which she worked, also expressing libellous opinions on it and its employees, to a former colleague then hired by a competitor company. The case in hand refers to the conclusion of a disciplinary proceeding founded on a completely generic objection. In this respect, the Court of Appeals competent for the territory, overturning the judgement of first instance, stated that “the disciplinary objection was formulated in generic terms, making reference to facts lacking temporal setting and referred to unspecified individuals”, reasons for which it had to be declared void. And the judge in charge, subsequently involved in the matter, in confirming the second instance ruling had the opportunity to state once again the unanimous trend in case-law according to which disciplinary objections must meet the requirements of “specificity, immediacy and immutability”. This because they are “destined to ensure the right of defence of the accused employee, a right that would be compromised whenever the employer could order a dismissal for conducts for which the employee was not put into a position of justifying him/herself because [such conducts] were not promptly objected, [or were] different from the conducts subject matter of the initial objection, or [were] not adequately defined in their essential methods and thus impossible to identify specifically”. Thus, the violation of the fundamental requirements of the objection (specificity, immediacy and immutability) vitiates the disciplinary proceeding, thus voiding the disciplinary provision that may be issued.