Losing your job is always traumatic but in the midst of a pandemic it will have been dramatic to get back on your feet. A hospital security guard citizen 4 years later managed to have its rights recognized and the Court of Appeal of Florence, overturning the first degree verdict, sentenced the security company to 12 months’ salary compensation for illegitimacy of the provision plus related severance pay and approximately 9 thousand euros in legal costs.
The incredible facts of which the Florentine security guard was the protagonist refer to 2020, the annus horribilis of Covid 19, and at the basis there are a bicycle, suspicious disciplinary measures and even a complaint for threats.
In that already stressful and worrying period for everyone, the 40-year-old Florentine often used his bicycle to go to work, and he had the habit of locking her in a closet of the hospital to avoid thefts during his service, but he could not even imagine that from this simple gesture, even if not agreed with anyone, the worst nightmare for a worker in full lockdown could emerge and materialize.
The company initiates some disciplinary measures which however end in nothing, except in the case of the bicycle for which he is sanctioned. He doesn’t understand the reason for so much fury and begins to protest, first by email and then by telephone. He has a degree in Literature, he works as a security guard because he couldn’t find anything else decent and despite the heavy shifts it is an important company that pays its employees on time even if the national contracts are low but he has a family so he carries out his duties without problems. But he has a strong character so those who according to him were “mysterious” abuses of the company towards him, in a decidedly absurd historical period due to Covid, stigmatizes them and does not remain silent but at that point the incredible happens.
The personnel manager to whom he had telephoned to protest against the disciplinary measures and against the fine for putting his bicycle in a hospital closet without permission, he sues him for threats. A terrible process begins which, even in the precautionary phase, will lead to his having his firearms license and, above all, his security guard license suspended.
The next one is inexorable dismissal. The man cannot believe what he is experiencing and turns to a lawyer he trusts but the Florentine Court also establishes that the dismissal is legitimate. Without work and without a license, in a couple of months and for reasons he doesn’t understand, he can’t get over it.
Countersuit for slander the human resources manager and in the meantime is appealing against the first instance sentence. Meanwhile, the complaints lead to nothing and his gun license is returned to him and above all his license to be able to work elsewhere, and in recent days he finally receives the second degree sentence which restores truth and justice while also restoring his dignity.
He had never threatened anyone“It was therefore certainly an excited outburst, but certainly not altered in tone or threatening in content”, the Appellate judges commented tersely in their ruling. For the judges, Papait Rugiu and Taiti, of the Court of Appeal of Florence, the employment relationship is extinguished because the fiduciary relationship between the parties has ceased but the dismissal was unlawful so man now will have to be compensated with 12 months’ compensation plus related severance pay and 9 thousand euros in expenses legal. In the end the Florentine security guard emerged from a personal nightmare in the global nightmare of the pandemic of those first terrifying months of Covid.
Tags: Florence fired badly parked bicycle security guard compensated
