Company ordered to pay 1,500-euro compensation for sending emails to employee while on sick leave

The High Court of Justice of Galicia has fined a company for continuously sending emails to an employee who was on medical leave. As the plaintiff stated, this was a common practice outside working hours in general. The sentence orders that the company pay compensation of 1,500 euros for the emotional disturbance caused.

The judges of the Galician High Court reminded that the right to digital disconnection "requires that no communications are received from the company outside working time". "This right is not fulfilled simply because the employee is not obliged to respond to messages received outside working hours immediately or otherwise." The court states that this right "entails an obligation on the part of the employer and of the dependent or related persons to abstain from communications of a work-related nature outside working time".

In the judgment, the court emphasised that, in addition, in this case "the right to digital disconnection is linked to the fundamental right to moral integrity", as the worker received emails from company staff while she was on temporary disability leave. The judges said that the company "was not a guarantor of her right to digital disconnection when she was outside her working hours, since the contract was suspended due to temporary incapacity".

Furthermore, they added that "the cause of the temporary incapacity was an anxiety disorder and, therefore, a psychological ailment, which aggravates the interference with the right to moral integrity, in view of the uneasiness involved in receiving mail from the company during temporary incapacity".

"This action by the company, in breach of the duty to disconnect digitally in the case of a worker in a situation of temporary incapacity, violates moral integrity, as it objectified the worker and violated her dignity, as the company expected the worker to be at its disposal at any time in her life, including a situation of temporary incapacity, to attend to or at least receive communications from the company," concluded the court. It also pointed out that the company "did not prove the necessity of those communications, nor that it was impossible to implement technical measures to prevent the claimant from receiving those emails, which went beyond the initial notice of medical leave".

The magistrates partially upheld the appeal lodged by the company, because although they understood that the violation of the right to moral integrity is "clear", they considered that "there is no evidence of a violation of physical integrity in the strict sense (art. 15 EC), nor of the right to honour (art. 18.1 EC), which were also found at first instance".

The judgment is not final, as an appeal can be lodged.