The use of applications like Badoo during our work day on our company computer could cause us to be dismissed. This has been stated by the Supreme Court.
He Supreme Court recently endorsed the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, which described as appropriate the dismissal of a worker who uses the company computer to access dating applications, such as Badoo, during his work day.
The company had suspected for some time that said worker was using the computer resources provided by the company to visit pages on a personal basis. This concern caused the company to opt for start monitoring of Internet access on your corporate network. And it was then that it was detected that said employee was continually visiting news, travel and social media sites. Once he detected the monitoring, he chose to use a VPN to evade said control and continue violating his company’s internal regulations. The company did not take long to fire him for the reasons already mentioned, alleging a fair dismissal.
The lawsuit was dismissed
The worker did not agree with the disciplinary dismissal, so he chose to take the case to court with the aim of make it inadmissible. The justification is that his conduct did not represent any serious violation of his job duties. However, both the Social Court No. 6 of Seville, in the first place, and the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, subsequently, They rejected the request.
Justice relied on the article 54.2 of the Workers’ Statute, which established that the dismissal could be disciplinary for the “breach of trust in the performance of work” and a “violation of contractual good faith”. In addition to considering that the company’s internal regulations already prohibited workers from using computer equipment for personal purposes, at the same time they warned about the possibility of supervision.
Despite the refusal, the worker decided to take his defense a step further and chose to file an appeal, since he considered that other judicial decisions in similar cases had ruled in favor of the worker.
It didn’t go well
Despite all attempts by the worker, the Supreme Court also rejected the appeal, confirming that it had all the ingredients to be considered a disciplinary dismissal for two reasons: both for the improper use of computer media and for evasion of access controls.
Therefore, and despite all the time invested by the worker, Justice has been clear about this from the first moment. A worker who uses computer media of his employer to repeatedly make personal inquiries has sufficient grounds to be dismissed appropriately. Even more so if you are aware that the company has the authority to monitor the use of the equipment and the worker makes the decision to implement extra measures, such as a VPN, to try to hide the traffic data of the websites they visit.
