Despite being convinced that his former company, Vinsa Alentis, fired him because he had previously reported an irregularity in his contract to the Labor Inspectorate, Juan Pedro Felipe Martín wants to return to work as a security guard at the Guacimeta Airport, where he was until December of last year when they certified his settlement, after an alleged altercation with a passenger. He therefore decided to sue Vinsa for "unfair dismissal" since he denies the facts and believes that there are other reasons behind it.
He wants reinstatement. "Then I'll see what I do, but I want the truth to prevail," he claimed before the oral hearing that took place this Wednesday in the Social Court of Arrecife and that has been seen for sentencing.
However, although the worker suspects that the altercation with the passenger was an excuse to fire him and his lawyer has insisted during the hearing on these antecedents of the complaint to the Inspectorate to justify that Vinsa acted "in bad faith" and out of "enmity", the Judge has focused the interrogations on demonstrating whether the altercation took place and to what degree there was offense on the part of Martín towards a user, who turned out to be a judge and that reference was made to this rank in the dismissal letter, according to the security guard.
Vinsa's lawyer has tried to demonstrate through documentary and testimonial evidence that the verbal confrontation attributed to Juan Pedro Felipe Martín is "true and real" and that the sanction imposed by the company, that is, the dismissal, was "proportional to the fault", which has been classified as very serious because it also results in a "lack of trust". For these reasons, he has requested the dismissal of the lawsuit.
On the other hand, the lawyer for the worker and plaintiff has pointed out on several occasions that his client denies the facts and that, in any case, an action of this type is classified in article 53 of the agreement as a "minor offense", before which the dismissal would be "unfair".
The alleged facts and reasons for the dismissal for the company were triggered on December 7 in Terminal 2 of the Guacimeta Airport in the control area. A passenger, who was going to take a flight to Las Palmas, felt, as he testified during the trial, "humiliated" by the treatment that Juan Pedro Felipe had given him when he was going to collect the belongings he had deposited on the tray. "I was very embarrassed not only by what he said to me but by the aggressive and loud tone," the passenger declared.
According to what he continued to narrate, after the moments of tension, the affected user addressed the security guard and, in view of the fact that they could not reconcile their spirits, expressed a verbal complaint to a Civil Guard who wrote a report, from which the company determined his dismissal. The Civil Guard and a colleague of Martín have also testified as witnesses because they were at the scene of the altercation, but they claim that they did not see or hear anything.
In fact, none of the witnesses, not even the passenger himself, have corroborated the "insulting" phrase that appears in the report written by the Civil Guard, and the user has only been able to assure that Martín said to him: "I'm screwed and you're screwing me".
The "other reasons" for the dismissal
The lawyer for the worker and plaintiff has provided to the file, as documentary evidence, the latest payrolls of Juan Pedro Felipe with which he intends to demonstrate that, after the first lawsuit, the company began to reduce Martín's working hours and that his salary dropped from 2,600 to just over 600 euros, from September 2007 to December. The reasons for this action, in Juan Pedro's words, is that he had filed a lawsuit with the Labor Inspection Office for an irregularity in the contract and that it was resolved with a sanction to Vinsa.
The disagreements with the company, which for Martín are not such but a vindication of his rights, come from the renewal of his first contract. At that time he realized that he had been registered with Social Security four days after his work began. For this reason, he requested the company to rectify the situation and asked the Works Council for the quadrant that demonstrated that he began working on July 1, 2006 and not on the 5th as stated in the Social Security registry.
As the rectification did not occur, he reported the case and signed the renewal of the contracts stating that he was not in agreement. The Inspectorate sided with the worker and sanctioned the company and, according to Martín, from that moment on they reduced his overtime. Although, as a security guard, he had to work a minimum of 162 hours per month, for which he charged just over 600 euros, most of his salary, according to the worker, came from the overtime hours that they stopped assigning him. On December 11, three days after the altercation, they gave him a vacation until further notice and a week later he received his dismissal.
Juan Pedro Felipe Martín feels that the company did not respect "his presumption of innocence" and that no one spoke to him to corroborate what really happened on December 7. Finally, he has not testified in the trial, but he has acknowledged to La Voz that on the day of the events he maintained a "visual challenge" with the user, although he attributes the altercation to the "arrogance" and "prepotency of the passenger". But beyond what happened, he believes that he has lost his job because at the time he decided to "fight for his rights". "I don't want money, the goal is for the law to be fulfilled. If I am guilty, let them condemn me, but not before".
