The Baden-Württemberg State Labor Court has confirmed the effectiveness of an immediate dismissal of a works council member who had committed a data protection violation.
THE CASE
The complaining works council member (plaintiff) had worked as a development engineer at Robert Bosch GmbH in Stuttgart Feuerbach since 1997 and had been a member of the works council since 2006. In previous unfair dismissal proceedings, the plaintiff had published trial files including the defendant company's written submissions. The company then issued another extraordinary termination without notice due to this data protection violation. The employee defended himself against this with a claim for protection against dismissal. The plaintiff relied, among other things, on the fact that: Privacy regulation (GDPR) is not relevant at all because it occurs in the context of “personal or family activities” (Art. 2 Paragraph 2 Letter c) GDPR) acted.
The works council followed up on the plaintiff's termination § 103 BetrVG agreed.
THE DECISION OF THE STATE LABOR COURT OF March 25.03.2022, 7 (AZ: 63 SA 21/XNUMX)
The State Labor Court confirmed the decision of the Stuttgart Labor Court. This saw the plaintiff's data protection violation as an important reason in the sense of § 626 para. 1 BGB and therefore considered the termination without notice to be effective. In the Press Release The court says this:
“[…] Anyone who, as part of a legal procedure brought by him, discloses certain written documents from the opposing party, in which data, in particular special categories of personal data (health data), are processed, to the company public through the use of a link provided and thereby also the possibility of further distribution without having a justifiable reason for doing so, unlawfully and culpably violates the personal rights of the persons named in these pleadings, with the result that the extraordinary termination of the defendant is justified in this case. In any case, the plaintiff's legitimate interests were not safeguarded insofar as the reasons for the decision of the labor court were not yet available on the day the link was made available and the plaintiff also had the option of filing an appeal against the judgment in order to resolve these proceedings to present his point of view. […]”
CONCLUSION
Companies should comprehensively inform and train employees and works councils about the potential dangers of handling personal data. The decision shows that even extraordinary termination can be justified.
