Possibility of termination of employment contract by the employee due to degradation of duties

When there is degradation for the worker in the functions that he/she has been carrying out, there is the possibility of requesting the termination of the employment contract due to a serious and culpable breach by the company. In this case, the compensation is equivalent to that of unfair dismissal.

This has been established in a recent ruling by the High Court of Justice of Madrid, which declared that the termination of the employment relationship at the worker's request due to a serious and culpable breach of contract by the employer, with prejudice to professional training and undermining the worker's dignity, is in accordance with the law.

In this case, the plaintiff worker, who worked as an inspector at a bus station and was in charge of both ticket issuing and route inspection, reporting directly to the company's management, received a notice informing him that, from that moment on, his duties would be modified, and that he would now be exclusively responsible for ticket issuing at the ticket office.

The Court understands that, in order for the worker to be able to request the termination of the contract, it is necessary that there has been a substantial modification of the working conditions unilaterally by the employer and that this business decision is harmful to the professional training or dignity of the worker. In the present case, the Court considers that those conditions are met, since it is not merely an order from the employer to perform a different position within the limits of functional mobility, but a genuine and permanent assignment of a lower-ranking post by depriving her of the higher inspection and decision-making functions that she had been performing until that time.

Furthermore, there is a detriment to his training, since it is difficult for an inspector who is relegated to ticket-issuing tasks to develop as an inspector, which affects his dignity both for himself and in terms of his external projection vis-à-vis his colleagues, given that the demotion is affecting an employee who has been with the company for 41 years and who until that time had enjoyed the employer's trust.

In relation to this action of compensated termination of the contract at the worker's request, also known as voluntary dismissal, it should be pointed out that the employee obtains compensation for unfair dismissal and also accesses unemployment benefit.

According to Article 50 of the Workers' Statute, there are three possible causes of dismissal:

• Modification of working conditions when they violate the worker's dignity.
• Continued delay or non-payment of wages.
• Other serious breaches of company obligations, including, among others, the violation of fundamental rights, delays in the payment of benefits for incapacity for work, breaches of occupational risk prevention or lack of effective employment.

Remember that our firm has employment lawyers who will be able to help you in any matter related to this and any other issues related to employment law that may arise.