Man awarded €210,400 for wrongful dismissal for taking unsellable sausages

The court awarded a 59-year-old man over 210,000 euros in compensation for wrongful dismissal from the meat company where he had worked for 36 years. Gepo from Nieuw-Vennep fired him with immediate effect for theft after finding out he took a bag full of unsellable sausages home. But according to employees, that was standard practice for years. The court in Haarlem ruled that the summary dismissal was far too strict.

The man did not argue that he took a bag of sausages home without paying for them on the Friday in early May in question. But he argued that it was not a reason for dismissal as employees have been allowed to take home “leftover” sausages for years.

These involve sausages that are within 50 days from their “best before” date, which means they can not be sold but can still be eaten. Sausages are sometimes also unsellable but still edible when the factory tries something new. All these sausages were placed in a crate next to the entrance to the production hall, and the staff could take them, various employees testified. According to one employee, the problem is that “the management team never comes to the work floor and, therefore, does not know how things work on the work floor.”

So when management saw the man take sausages home with him one Friday early in May, they summarily dismissed him, citing the company’s zero tolerance for theft in his dismissal letter.

The court found the summary dismissal far too strict. This far-reaching measure is only allowed if there is no other solution and there is an “urgent reason” for the employee to leave immediately.

The written rules may have been different, but statements from other employees show that taking leftover sausages was tolerated for years. The company has not provided sufficient evidence that this was not the case and that the man could have known that he was breaking the rules. “Given the lack of a clear, transparent policy that is also known to the employees,” the court ruled, it cannot be said that the man was deliberately stealing from the company.

By dismissing the man on the spot, Gepo did not take account of his long and spotless track record with the companies and the difficulties he could face in finding other work given his bare CV. The court held this against the company.

The court awared the man 7,781 euros in compensation because his employment was not terminated according to the rules, plus a transition payment of 52,619 euros because his dismissal was unjustified. On top of that, Gepo must also pay 150,000 euros in compensation for lost income, the court ruled.