Castilla y Leon High Court of Justice (TSJ) appropriately confirmed dismissal from an employee who hung up the phone TikTok videos dance while on leave backache. According to the decision made public by the high court recently, justice accepted the content uploaded by the dismissed person on his social network account as conclusive evidence to justify the source of his dismissal. Not all courts decide in the same direction, and some consider it excessive to use the content published by the company’s employees on social networks as evidence, while others find it lawful if the employee is aware of the dissemination of the content or does so. . in a general account.
Events date back to September 14, 2021, when Semark AC Group SA reported the layoff to a worker who had been on leave for nearly nine months due to low back pain and had 15 years of experience with the company. The employee was periodically renewed with duly justified medical reports. temporary disabilityuntil the domain admin reports to human resources the content they see that the employee has posted on their personal TikTok profile.
“It has been possible to confirm that you have made numerous video streams with the profile in question from the date of your discharge to September 10. […] In them, it somehow dances, moves and moves. incompatible With injury diagnosed in January 2021. What was diagnosed as a short period of recovery has become a viral exposure of videos showing fraud in the help system and a lack of respect for the company and its colleagues,” reads the dismissal letter sent to the employee and is included in the sentence.
And a temporary disability leave exempts the employee from going to work to recuperate, but also obliges him to do everything possible to take care of his health and refrain from all activities that are incompatible or could aggravate his illness.
Supreme Court judges consider the dismissal to be proper. argued Y documented decides that it was made by the company and that it did not make any errors in form, and therefore the worker’s appeal against which the court of first instance was decided to be rejected. The high court accepts the videos shared by the employee on the social network as binding evidence after the publication date is verified by an expert.
Beware of public profiles
Employees’ use of their social networks, and the consequences it may have for the company they work for, has an increasing appeal, although not all penalties fail along the same lines. Some argue that companies’ interception and monitoring of their employees’ social networks is a violation of their right to privacy, even if they eventually find evidence like the one described in the TikTok case.
others as dictated by Supreme Court of the Canary Islands The worker who disseminated the content in 2016 is conscious of himself and with the desire to reflect, they think that there is no such violation. The Canary case is happening on Facebook, not TikTok. A worker has an accident in his spare time and injures his arm. He cannot work this way, he goes to the doctor and gives sick leave. Shortly after, the employee posted on his Facebook account pictures of him playing the guitar or doing DIYs in the home garden – his profile was public and accessible to everyone.
Here, the Canarian judges consider that the employee, as a user of the social network, knows that everyone, including his company, has access to his photos. What validates the tests. this Asturias High CourtIn 2013, some photos posted on social networks of a worker who took medical leave for a cervical contracture and went to Madrid the next day to go to an amusement park with some friends were also accepted as evidence.
right Freedom of expression It is another controversial point that sometimes conflicts with companies’ will to protect their corporate image. The majority of the sentences here specify that the employee is free to post any message on their social networks, as long as the employee does not introduce himself as a company representative in his profile, although there are different interpretations.