Train driver on sick leave caught working second job loses €100K severance lawsuit
A train driver who was fired after his employer caught him working another job while on sick leave for burnout, went to court claiming unfair dismissal and demanding over €100,000 in damages. The Rotterdam sub-district court shot down this claim and described the man’s actions as “seriously reprehensible conduct,” according to a ruling published this week.
The man started working as a train driver at Lineas Nederland in Zwijndrecht, a Dutch subsidiary of a Belgian rail freight company, in September 2022. In October 2024, the man called in sick with burnout symptoms.
Six months later, on 19 May 2025, Lineas Nederland received a report that the man might be working elsewhere, despite telling his employer and the company doctor that he was incapable of working. The company investigated and found him working as a train driver at Qbuzz, doing basically the same job he was incapable of doing at Lineas Nederland.
The man’s job at Qbuzz did not involve negligible occupational therapy tasks, either. He worked for the second company more and more, starting with 24 hours in January 2025. In April 2025, the man worked 140 hours, including eight night shifts, amounting to nearly a full-time job.
On 28 May 2025, Lineas Nederland confronted the train driver with its findings and summarily dismissed him. The man was not happy with the dismissal and took the matter to court. He demanded €100,000 in damages for wrongful dismissal, a transition payment, and wage payment for his notice period, estimated at another €10,000.
The train driver argued that he should not have been dismissed because his employer had permitted him to perform secondary work in early 2023. He also argued that his employer was about to reduce his salary to 75 percent after six months of illness, so he needed the other job to supplement his salary. And he argued that this second job at Qbuzz was less demanding than the work at Lineas because it involved passengers rather than freight.
The court ruled against the man. “The employer is not required to pay a transition payment to the employee because, in the opinion of the sub-district court judge, the dismissal is the result of seriously reprehensible conduct and negligence on the part of the employee,” the court said.
“Specifically, for more than half a year, the employee gave the impression that he was completely incapable of performing his own work as a train driver to the employer and the company doctor involved, while during that time he continued to perform virtually the same work for another employer without permission, increasingly to nearly full-time employment, and also including night shifts, which came at the expense of reintegrating with the employer. This is highly reprehensible on his part.”
While Lineas had permitted the man to do secondary work in 2023, subject to conditions, the man could have known that it did not mean he was allowed to do a second near-full-time job while receiving illness benefits from his original employer, the court said.
The company demanded 61,000 euros in penalties from the former employee, alleging he violated a clause prohibiting him from working for a competitor. However, the court found that while the ban on ancillary activities was mentioned in a 2017 version of the firm’s employee regulations, it was missing from the updated version sent to workers at the start of 2024.
