A marketing employee of a cookie factory discovered that the employer was not complying with the Collective Labor Agreement for Confectionery. His employer asked him not to tell his colleagues about this, but he did. He also asked to gather the staff to establish a staff representation. The employer then dismissed him with immediate effect because he had not adhered to the confidentiality clause in his employment contract.
The Limburg court annulled this dismissal. The confidentiality clause did not apply to informing colleagues about compliance with the collective labor agreement, and the employee was free to do so despite a possible imposed prohibition. The employee had also been sufficiently careful in his wording. In addition, the subdistrict court judge considered that the employer had chosen not to provide transparency to all employees.
The dismissal was annulled, the requested conditional termination was rejected because no culpable behavior was found, and the employee was awarded his claims due to non-compliance with the collective labor agreement (ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2017:5183).
