Disciplinary dismissal for absences from work after a long employment relationship without the dismissal being challenged. Fraud of law. Allegation by the Public Employment Service that the worker was not legally unemployed.
The judicial challenge of the dismissal is not a legal requirement to access unemployment benefits. The cause of the dismissal was the repeated absence of the worker from her job, which, undoubtedly, constituted a conduct only attributable to her; but this cannot be qualified as a deliberate intention to lose her job, since all disciplinary dismissals respond to the serious and culpable conduct of the worker, without the disciplinary dismissal being outside the legal concept of unemployment. Although it is suspicious that only 2 days after the dismissal the worker signed the lease contract for the premises where she was to work as a hairdresser, not being impossible to find suitable premises and arrange the lease in only 2 days, but when that short period is surrounded by the uncontested disciplinary dismissal and the claim for the single payment of unemployment benefits, the situation is, at least, suspicious and this justifies the legitimate attempts of the State Public Employment Service to defend the legality and to prevent it from being deceived. Even so, however, it cannot go beyond suspicion, since the facts formally took place within the legality (TSJPV 2/11/2021).
