A 14-year-old boy has been fired for not showing up for his part-time job. The boy earned some extra money by working on Saturdays for the Tilburg butcher’s chain Fons Pessers. The boy’s father rejected this dismissal and filed a lawsuit. The Breda court ruled on Tuesday that the summary dismissal was unjustified.
During the handling of the case, the teenager mainly seems to be a victim of an argument between father and employer. It was also the father who unsubscribed his son for that particular Saturday via an app. In the message, the father told the employer that his son had other obligations that day.
Pretty blunt
That boy’s boss wasn’t happy about that. He said that the boy could not simply cancel his work. He was also desperately needed, because it would be very busy on Saturday due to the opening of a new store. The butcher wanted the boy to come to work after all.
“I honestly find your response quite blunt, especially because you don’t know what the reason is,” the father replied. The teen didn’t show up that Saturday. The employer then informed via an app that the boy did not have to come back. He was summarily dismissed.
Choice
The father was not satisfied with this and sent a lawyer to the butcher’s shop chain. It demanded that compensation be paid for unfair dismissal, a transition payment and the remaining wages for the remaining contract period. In total it was almost 1500 euros. The lawyer was clear. Payment had to be made otherwise a lawsuit would follow.
That lawsuit was filed this Tuesday and the judge partly agreed with father. The amount was lower than requested. The butcher must pay the boy 428 euros. The teenager did not say anything during the hearing. The butcher also never spoke to his former employee again.
In return for Omroep Tilburg the butcher sighed afterwards that the conflict had gotten out of hand. According to him, the boy became a victim of adult men who fought for their own rights in a courtroom. “We could have just been at work and the boy wouldn’t have had to miss a day of school. There were seven of us discussing an amount of a few hundred euros. This really shouldn’t have been necessary.”