Contacts

The invocation of the violation of the principle of immediacy in disciplinary disputes is increasingly popular among the lawyers of workers dismissed for disciplinary reasons, who in this way are hopeful of obtaining the reinstatement in service that, following recent legislative reforms, is no longer the only remedy for an illegitimate withdrawal of employment by the employer. 
Even when the hearing only happens after a few weeks of the occurrence of the offending fact, the worker is quick to complain about an alleged slowness in challenging the disciplinary infringement on the part of the employer. In this way the employee who deserved to be dismissed on the grounds of their seriously deficient behaviour, looks for a chance of reintegration into the workforce on the formal level.
Mind you, this possibility still exists today, despite the change of article 18 of the Workers’ Statute (intervened with Law 92/2012) and the epochal transition from a system of sanctions based on reintegration only to a system where the reaction to the unwarranted dismissal is modulated according to the type of behaviour identified with further clarifications, however, which will be considered last with regard to layoffs described in the so-called Jobs Act.
Deliberately leaving aside the debate inherent to the meaning of the “disputed fact”” in a material rather than a juridical sense, we note that today reinstatement is only possible when there is no evidence of the disputed fact (see Article 18, paragraph 4 of the workers&rsquo