Ending Employment Contracts: Termination Scenarios & Rights

Termination of the Employment Contract

1. Termination by Performance

A) Expiration of the Agreed Time

This applies to fixed-term contracts. In such cases, the worker is entitled to receive an amount equivalent to 12 days of salary per year of service (excluding replacement and training contracts).

B) Completion of the Work or Service

Termination occurs when the conditions subsequent are validly recorded in the contract, unless they constitute an abuse of law by the employer.

2. Termination by Death, Retirement, or Permanent Disability

A) Death, Permanent Disability, and Retirement of the Employee

• Background: the personal nature of the work performed.
• After the employee's death, their heirs do not generate any kind of compensation (unless otherwise provided in the collective agreement or in the contract).

B) Retirement, Permanent Disability, and Death of Individual Entrepreneur and Termination of Legal Entity

• The contract is extinguished unless the enterprise is transferred to another entrepreneur and continues the activity (transfer of undertaking).
• The disappearance of the individual employer entitles the worker to a compensation of one month's salary.
• The disappearance of the employer corporation is to be treated as a collective redundancy.

3. Termination by Mutual Agreement

The employment contract may terminate by mutual agreement of the parties.

• It requires the consent of both parties.
• The consent should be formalized in writing to avoid problems.
• The employer must submit a proposal of final liquidation payment, which must clear all pending debts between the parties.

4. Termination by Will of the Employee

A) With Cause

• It is based on the prior existence of breaches of contract by the employer.
• The termination must be declared by a judge.
• The judge will grant the employee the right to receive compensation for unfair dismissal: 33 days of salary per year of service, with a maximum of 24 months.

Breaches of contract:

1. Substantial modifications in the working conditions carried out without complying with the law, undermining the dignity of the worker concerned.
2. Non-payment of wages and continuous delays in payments.
3. Any other serious breach of duties by the employer.

B) Without Cause

a) Resignation:

• The employment contract will terminate with the resignation of the employee who voluntarily departs.
• The employee must comply with a notice period within the time established by the collective agreements or the local custom. It shall be in writing: “letter of resignation”.

b) Abandonment of the Worker

• It is characterized because it's a sudden act or unexpected, and its lack of 'externalization' of communication to the enterprise.
• It is pure absence from work, so long and presumably final.

c) By Decision of the Worker Who is Forced to Leave Their Job as a Result of Being a Victim of Gender-Based Violence