A supermarket in Logroño fires its manager for fraud for purchasing products at a price below the market Price

After a first ruling handed down by a Logroño court, the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of La Rioja has confirmed the admissibility of the dismissal of the head of a supermarket for wholesalers located in the capital for acquiring products at a price lower than the market price. , failing to comply with the company’s internal procedures and acting fraudulently.

The employee in question billed himself, which is totally prohibited for all workers – although according to company rules they can purchase products using their customer account – and he also did so at a lower price than the marked one and outside of current promotions.

As stated in the ruling subsequently appealed, and after carefully examining the data referring to the sales recorded in the supermarket’s management program, it was found that since 2019 the purchases with special prices made by the person responsible had been increasing, as well as that The amounts applied differed from those charged to other customers for the same products. Likewise, it was sufficiently demonstrated that, upon instructions from the accused worker himself, the employee who opened the cash register entered his code, which remained unchanged throughout the day regardless of the cashier’s assistant who was in charge of collecting payment throughout that day.

In the opinion of the judges responsible for the case, it is evident the implementation of a series of behaviors guided by a unity of purpose and purpose, with continuity over time and carried out “trying to evade business control mechanisms”, clearly favored due to the position of responsibility and the hierarchical position that the worker occupied in the company, with the aggravating factor that “the failure to comply with the business protocol of identifying the seller with his personal code contributed to the concealment of his conduct,” clearly inappropriate.

 

Appropriate objective dismissal

 

As the court explained, the reason for the dismissal was not not having performed their job correctly but rather having purchased numerous products not previously enabled as promotions, labeled as such and located in the space designated for that purpose, which is what it was really for. authorized, and for an amount less than the appraised sale price, both for your personal use and for that of your family or friends. By not being subject to any type of control “by his hierarchical superior,” he imposed on the staff employees who were under his charge and under his responsibility the violation of the “company action protocol.” For this reason, the Social Chamber ratifies the objective dismissal due to the commission of a labor infraction of abuse of trust or violation of contractual good faith considered very serious.

In many cases similar to this, private investigation can be the best help for Justice when it comes to finding out the facts and reliably verifying their veracity, which is why the role played by detectives increasingly gains more weight in the phases prior to the investigation. opening of numerous judicial processes in the labor field.