Since it is not legally established the way in which the employee must comply with the obligation to communicate to the company the medical reports of sick leave, confirmation, and discharge, he/she can choose the way in which to do it.
The Audiencia Nacional resolves the lawsuit filed by several unions requesting the nullity of the manual sent by a contact center company to the staff, indicating a computer application as the only means of communication of medical sick leave.
Since it is not legally established the way in which the worker must comply with the obligation to communicate to the company the medical reports of sick leave, confirmation, and discharge, he/she can choose the way in which to do it. Therefore, the system imposed by the company obliging workers to use a computer application and to participate in the communication of sick leave reports is null and void.
The Audiencia Nacional (NA 16-11-22, EDJ 740885) resolves the lawsuit filed by several unions requesting the nullity of the manual sent by a contact center company to the staff, indicating a computer application as the only means of communication of medical sick leave. The manual specifies that the employee must access the application, code the case within a list of possibilities, attach the medical report in PDF format and fill in a series of fields referring to the sender and data contained in the medical report such as type of sick leave, issuing entity, duration of the sick leave, start date of the sick leave, date of issuance of the report, date of medical discharge indicating the reason.
The NA points out that the workers statute establishes the employee’s obligation to provide the employer with the medical leave report, as well as the successive confirmation and discharge reports, without indicating the means by which this must be done. Since this obligation is imposed on the employee, it is up to the latter to determine how to comply with it, especially when nothing is established in this respect in the collective labor agreement. In view of the different systems of communication and remission of information currently in existence, it is reasonable that the employee may opt, in addition to the delivery of the reports in person at the company, for their remission by ordinary mail, or for the use of electronic communication systems such as photographing the document and sending it via WhatsApp or scanning it and sending it by e-mail.
The Medical Leave Communication Manual imposed by the employer in the case under analysis is not a simple mechanism for sending medical reports but imposes the obligatory participation of the employee in the computerized administrative management of the medical report that he/she sends. With this, the employer’s mandate goes beyond the simple obligation to deliver the medical report to the employer, obliging him to collaborate in its computerized processing without any legal support to justify it, especially when the determination of how the worker complies with the delivery of the medical report to the employer is up to him as the obligated party.
In view of these circumstances, the NA upheld the claim declaring the nullity of the Medical Leave Communication Manual.
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