Dismissal of an employee for breach of company practice is lawful

The Bologna Employment Tribunal, with its decision no. 734 of 7 July 2017 under Art. 1 of Italian Law no. 92/201, confirmed the order issued during the summary case hearing and declared as lawful the dismissal for just cause of an employee who had been absent from work for a continuous period of 3 weeks, without having complied with the required company approval procedure. More specifically, the worker had followed the company practice in June 2015 and had asked for and obtained a continuous period of 3 weeks’ holiday. Subsequently, the worker organised a second continuous period of holidays, also lasting 3 weeks, but this time falling in the following month of September, and merely informed the Head of Production about this further need of absence. The Head of Production gave his/her approval and invited the worker to fill in the approval forms to obtain the final approval of the holiday plan from the CEO. The employee did not follow the company practice and only verbally informed the CEO of his intended absence at the beginning of September 2015. The CEO refused permission to the employee to take these holidays since he had already used up all his holiday entitlement. Despite this, he decided to absent himself from work for the said period. On his return to work, he was subjected to a disciplinary procedure which led to his dismissal for just cause. The employee challenged the dismissal in the courts, stating among other things that the dismissal had been discriminatory as his absence was linked to a pilgrimage prescribed by his religion. The Tribunal in question rejected the worker’s petition and stated that, by acting in that way, he had knowingly breached the company’s procedures and directives and demonstrated his intention not to take account of the company’s right to organise and manage the distribution of work. According to the Tribunal, the worker’s actions irreparably damaged the relationship of trust that underlies a normal employment relationship and it was also of the opinion that his claim regarding the discriminatory nature of the dismissal was excessive and misleading.