The court ruled that the dismissal of all unapproved employees after receiving an application for voluntary retirement due to financial difficulties was unfair dismissal.
The Seoul Administrative Court recently ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by a social welfare corporation against the Chairman of the Central Labor Relations Commission, demanding that the retrial for unfair dismissal be canceled.
The corporation that operates a nursing facility for the elderly received an application for voluntary retirement due to financial difficulties in January 2020, and 25 out of 32 employees applied for retirement.
Afterwards, the facility dismissed 7 non-applicants for 'business reasons', but the local Labor Relations Commission accepted the unfair dismissal relief application filed by the non-applicants in May of the same year.
The corporation applied for a retrial to the National Labor Relations Commission, but when the decision was rejected, there was an 'urgent managerial need' to dismiss the employees due to financial difficulties, and the company also went through consultations with the workers, such as arranging procedures to avoid dismissal such as voluntary retirement. An administrative suit was filed to cancel the retrial decision.
However, the court did not accept the legal entity's argument.
While acknowledging that the facility had difficult circumstances, such as receiving a suspension of work for 50 days in a situation where the facility had to refund 500 million won for long-term care benefit costs, it judged that the dismissal of all applicants for voluntary retirement constituted unfair dismissal. I did.
The court said, "The selection of all workers as subjects of dismissal simply because they did not apply for voluntary retirement cannot be regarded as being based on reasonable or objective criteria."
"The dismissal in this case is an urgent business necessity, but the plaintiff did not make every effort to avoid the dismissal," he added.
(Photo = Yonhap News)