TST secures job stability for a workplace accident even without an INSS sickness benefit, and reinstates an employee dismissed during recovery
The TST's 2nd Panel ruled that recognizing a typical workplace accident is, by itself, enough to secure accident-related job stability: a company cannot rely on the absence of an INSS occupational sickness benefit to justify a dismissal.
On the docket: the TST's 2nd Panel ruled, on September 10, on case RR-11658-90.2015.5.01.0018, involving Concessão Metroviária do Rio de Janeiro S.A. (MetrôRio) and an occupational-health physician dismissed while recovering from knee synovitis, an injury related to her professional activity. The company had refused to issue the Workplace Accident Report (CAT) and argued that, absent a formal leave granted by the INSS, there was no job stability to protect. The reporting justice rejected that argument based on TST Precedent 378: recognition of the typical workplace accident is, by itself, enough to secure job stability, and the causal link can be established even when the job-related condition is only confirmed after the dismissal. MetrôRio was ordered to reinstate the physician and to pay wages for the period between the dismissal and her actual return (ConJur; IBDP).
The ruling removes a line of defense that part of the HR and legal community still considers safe: treating the absence of a formal report to Social Security, whether because the company did not issue the CAT or because the employee did not file for the benefit, as if it meant there was no job stability to respect. It does not. What protects the job is the causal link between the injury and the work, not the INSS's administrative process.
This raises a specific yellow flag for those handling occupational health and safety and terminations: cases of leave for an injury, even informal ones or those documented only by an ordinary medical certificate, call for a second check before any termination. Refusing to issue a CAT, as happened in this case, does not shield the company; on the contrary, it can reinforce the court's perception of an attempt to mask the occupational causal link.
The risk is not limited to this specific case: any termination of an employee who has suffered an injury, even a minor one, in the recent period now carries greater exposure to reinstatement and to payment of back wages, a liability that grows every month until the final decision.
We use technology and Artificial Intelligence to help each company map, before a termination, which pending dismissals involve a recent history of leave or injury, and where that type of risk is concentrated. If your company does not yet have this x-ray of its own exposure, check out Nexus's free diagnostics (5 minutes).
Can your company say today, with confidence, how many of the terminations underway involve employees with a recent history of a work-related accident or injury?