An employee’s resignation must be clear and unequivocal.
When the employee’s clear and unequivocal intention to resign is not established, a judge may reclassify the resignation as dismissal without real and serious grounds.
In this case, prior to resigning, the employee had:
- mentioned his heavy workload during medical examinations carried out to monitor health at work;
- alerted his superiors to his critical situation due to his workload becoming unbearable;
- requested a visit from the occupational physician, reporting a context of excessive workload; and
- explained, during the annual individual appraisal meeting, that he had no work-life balance and that his scope of work, which was too broad, covering different time zones and without any backup, resulted in a very high and constant mental workload, which he found difficult to cope with personally.
The Court of Cassation considered that there was a dispute making the resignation ambiguous and that the termination of the employment contract should be reclassified as dismissal without real and serious grounds.
