Question:
I am six months pregnant, but the company is engaging in harassing behavior and pressuring me to resign. I would like to ask, can the company dismiss me due to pregnancy?
Answer:
Pursuant to Article 125 of the Labor Code 2019, the form of disciplinary dismissal shall only be applied in the following cases:
- The employee commits acts of theft, embezzlement, gambling, intentional infliction of injury, or use of illegal drugs at the workplace;
- The employee commits acts of disclosing business secrets, technological secrets, infringing the intellectual property rights of the employer, committing acts that cause serious damage or threaten to cause particularly serious damage to the assets or interests of the employer, or sexual harassment at the workplace as stipulated in the internal labor regulations;
- The employee is disciplined by extending the term for salary increase or demotion but commits a repeat offense while the disciplinary record has not yet been expunged. A repeat offense is the case where the employee repeats the violating act for which disciplinary action was previously taken but the disciplinary record has not yet been expunged pursuant to the provisions of Article 126 of this Code;
- The employee unilaterally abandons the job for 05 cumulative days within a period of 30 days or 20 cumulative days within a period of 365 days, counting from the first day of unauthorized absence, without justifiable reason.
Cases considered as justifiable reasons include natural disasters, fires, or the employee or a relative being sick with confirmation from a competent medical examination and treatment facility, and other cases stipulated in the internal labor regulations.”
Thus, pregnancy does not fall under any of the aforementioned cases, and therefore, the company's dismissal or pressure on a female employee to quit due to pregnancy violates the provisions of the law.
Furthermore, Clause 3, Article 137 of the Labor Code 2019 clearly stipulates:
"The employer shall not be allowed to dismiss or unilaterally terminate the labor contract with an employee due to marriage, pregnancy, maternity leave, or raising a child under 12 months of age, except in cases where the individual employer dies, is declared by the Court to have lost civil capacity, is missing or deceased, or the non-individual employer ceases operations".
Accordingly, the enterprise is not permitted to dismiss a pregnant female employee in any circumstances, except when the enterprise ceases operations or the individual employer no longer has legal capacity.
Consultation reference: labor services
