The Labor Productivity and Competitiveness Law contemplates the dismissal of the worker “due to drunkenness” in two cases. Meet them here.
Can a worker go to his workplace while intoxicated? This question has been the subject of locked debates between lawyers in labor lawsuits, but what does the law say? Article 25 of the Labor Productivity and Competitiveness Law has contemplated the dismissal of the worker in two cases:
- When assistance in a state of intoxication or under the influence of drugs or narcotic substances, it is repeated.
- When assistance in a state of intoxication or under the influx of drugs or narcotic substancesis not repeated, but Due to the nature of the function or work, it is exceptionally serious.
In the first case, according to the lawyer Alejandro Navarrete Maldonado, the norm does not specify what is the number of repeated assists in a state of drunkenness so that it is newly configured as an offense. However, there is a precedent that would serve to settle the issue as grounds for dismissal.
On the La Ley portal, the expert recalls that in 2019, the Constitutional Court considered the occurrence of this offense in a case where the worker was suspended on a first occasion for showing up drunk, and then he was fired. Therefore, for the lawyer, it will only be enough for the worker to go to his work center under the influence of alcohol to give credit to this fault.
In the case of the second assumption, it is necessary to remember when the Supreme Court of Justice validated, in July 2020, the dismissal of a worker who worked as operator of a high power generator set and, due to the seriousness of the event, he was fired because His work implied an imminent risk of causing an accident at workwhen in contact with energy and fuel management.
Can I get rid if I throw a minimum degree of alcohol?
According to the labor law specialist, “There is no minimum degree or level of alcohol in the blood required for the offense to be established” and ruled out that the level of alcohol in the blood is not an element to take into consideration. “The Constitutional Court specified that the breathalyzer table is applicable only to drivers in criminal matters, and not in the configuration of this labor offense,” he points out in his article published in the portal La Ley.
This question is decisively resolved in the verdict of the Second Chamber of Transitory Constitutional and Social Law of the Supreme Court June 2022, when a worker was fired because the result of the ethyl dosage yielded 0.30 grams of alcohol per liter of blood.
Source: Larepublica
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