Dismissal after arachnophobia gives compensation – 03/02/2023 – Market

The Labor Court of Minas Gerais ordered a pulp producer to pay R$5,000 in compensation to a worker dismissed after being diagnosed with arachnophobia —a phobia or extreme fear of spiders.

He stated in the lawsuit that he worked in a forested area, exposed to insects, reptiles, rodents and arachnids. In his day-to-day activities, he was often the target of jokes by co-workers, who knew of his aversion to spiders.

Over time, these games, which sometimes consisted of actually throwing spiders in their direction and, at other times, simulating the presence of a spider, would have contributed to the fear getting worse, until the diagnosis was confirmed in October 2019, according to the worker.

At the time, he had just completed a year on the job. On the same day that he sent the company a medical recommendation for the reassignment of his role, he was placed on vacation. Ten days after returning to work, he was fired.

For substitute labor judge Uilliam Frederic Lopes Carvalho, granting vacation immediately after completing the vesting period is an unusual situation.

“Therefore, the initial allegation that the vacation was actually granted to remove the author from the workplace, after the medical indication of reassignment of function”, he wrote in the sentence.

The company claimed in the action that the employee was fired because he did not have any kind of job guarantee. He also defended that the action presented almost two years after the dismissal was an “unequivocal” demonstration that he intended “to be compensated without any foundation.”

During the hearing, a representative of the company said that the dismissal was due to the need to reduce the staff and because this worker produced little.

The judge of the action considered that the worker proved a “stigmatizing” condition and that his removal followed by dismissal allows the presumption of the existence of discriminatory dismissal.

In addition to compensation for moral damages, the pulp company will have to double pay all compensation equivalent to the interval that begins on the date of dismissal, in 2019, until the filing of the lawsuit, in 2021.

According to the procedural consultation system of the TRT-3 (Regional Labor Court of the 3rd Region), of Minas Gerais, the condemned company even discussed the calculation of what it owes the worker. The company contested the correction index used, but the execution of payments to the former employee has already started.