If a worker is sent because he refuses a significant pay cut, it is a dismissal and not a termination of contract for just cause. This was established by the European Court of Justice.
“The fact that an employer proceeds, unilaterally and to the detriment of the worker – the judges write –, to substantially modify the essential elements of the contract for reasons not inherent to the worker himself falls within the concept of dismissal. Termination of an employment contract following the worker's refusal to consent to the change constitutes a dismissal within the meaning of the Collective Redundancies Directive. The Court recalls that dismissals are characterized by the lack of consent on the part of the worker".
The Court ruled on a rather complicated Spanish case. A company that had terminated numerous employment contracts for different reasons and in different ways and returned to the sender the request of one of its employees, who wanted the law on collective redundancies to be applied in his case. The company refused because it had already terminated some contracts with employee consent, including one worker who agreed to the consensual termination after refusing a 25% pay cut.
However, the Court considers that also in this case it was a question of dismissal, since the termination of the employment relationship "is attributable to the unilateral modification made by the employer to a substantial element of the employment contract for reasons not inherent to the person of the worker itself".
