Court: "Dismissal without objective criteria... Unfair personnel action"

Employee Dismissed for Missing Targets... Court: "Not a Fair and Objective Evaluation"

A court ruling has declared that dismissing an employee solely due to poor performance without objective criteria is unfair.

The Seoul Administrative Court, Administrative Division 14 (Presiding Judge Song Gak-yeop), announced on the 27th that it ruled in favor of former first-grade employee A of a certain Fisheries Cooperative in a lawsuit seeking to cancel the Central Labor Commission's decision on unfair dismissal relief reconsideration.

Mr. B joined the cooperative in 1994, resigned in 2003, rejoined in 2004, and was promoted to first-grade in 2009. Subsequently, in February 2017, the cooperative appointed Mr. A as a research committee member, a position typically assigned to employees with poor performance or issues. After appointing Mr. A as a recruitment specialist and special research committee member, the cooperative dismissed him in October 2020 due to poor performance in tasks such as special bond collection.

Mr. A filed a relief application with the local labor commission, claiming the dismissal was unfair. The commission ruled that the dismissal lacked justifiable grounds and was unfair. However, the Central Labor Commission's reconsideration recognized the legitimacy of the dismissal. Consequently, Mr. A filed a lawsuit. He argued that the regulation stating his work performance was extremely poor was very abstract and broad, and that his job performance ability could not be considered insufficient. He also claimed that the cooperative imposed practically unattainable goals, resulting in an unfair dismissal.

The court judged that the evaluation deeming Mr. A's work performance poor could not be considered fair and based on objective criteria. The court stated, "The cooperative did not specifically explain why Mr. A was assigned to handle mutual aid tasks," and added, "It is impossible to objectively verify whether the evaluation was reasonably fair compared to other employees or whether the goals assigned by the cooperative were achievable with effort from Mr. A."

Furthermore, the court noted that counter staff who directly recruit visiting customers naturally tend to have better mutual aid performance than others, and evaluating Mr. A's performance by comparing him to counter staff while he worked alone in the office is unfair. The court ruled, "Many special bonds are difficult or impossible to collect, so the lack of collection results cannot be solely blamed on Mr. A. Excluding counter staff, Mr. A's performance was the best, and it cannot be concluded that his performance was lower compared to other employees."