The ruling of the Constitutional Court (TC), in addition to endorsing objective dismissal when the worker is absent from work due to deterioration of their health and said absence is justified by the medical services, shows its clear ideological and political commitment to a certain class, the business community and its rate of profit. Now the TC reaffirms that freedom of enterprise and productivity are values superior to the life and health of workers.
The majority of the TC, by betting on the freedom of enterprise and its inviolability from being harmed by sick workers, forget that according to their own rules of the game (regulations), it gives the role to the employer, as solely responsible for the life and health of workers (Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks and ET), and by endorsing the "objective" dismissal of a worker who takes sick leave due to justified illness, they become accomplices in the duty to do and protect the health and life of workers.
The European Social Charter obliges the states that ratified it, and the Spanish state is one of them, to working conditions, the rights to information and consultation, equal opportunities in the labor market and equal treatment between men and women, but also to the protection of health and safety at work.
The blackmail to which workers are subjected, in the face of this real possibility of being dismissed for the fact of getting sick, many times as a consequence of the deplorable working conditions and the fear of workers to lose their job due to this type of dismissal may push them to go to work despite suffering from an illness or indisposition, with the risk of compromising their health, seriously injures their fundamental right to decent health and limits their actions both in the defense of their working conditions and in the demand for labor and social rights.
In the name of the market and private profit, the political class, the judiciary and the legislature, reinforced with their Labor Reforms and their Gag Laws, the "principle of freedom of enterprise" as the only principle of reality, turning Social Injustice into something "natural", like a "sacred" law.
Manuel Plasencia
Member of the Canal Gestión company committee representing the CGT
