Misbehaviour of employees which do not reach the level of bullying yet disrupt the workplace peace can be a ground for termination

According to Article 25/II-d of the Turkish Labour Act No. 4857, an employee’s bullying against the employer or one of its family members or another employee is listed as a just cause for termination. Several precedents of the Court of Cassation state that bullying may happen as threats, insults, or battery. That being the case, employers often wonder whether other misbehaviour of employees which do not qualify as bullying yet disrupt the workplace peace may constitute grounds for termination or not.

According to the Court of Cassation, having continuous and superfluous verbal disputes with other employees and creating conflicts with co-workers would constitute valid grounds for termination, as long as such misbehaviour does not reach the limit of bullying. This approach is adopted in several precedents as follows:

• “Based on the workplace records, witness statements and the case file, it is clear that the plaintiff did not batter his supervisor, nor that he threatened or insulted him. However, he rushed at him on the date of incident, and they had a verbal argument. Since it is understood that the plaintiff’s behaviour caused negativity at the workplace, and from a reasonable point of view, the defendant employer can no longer be expected to sustain the employment relationship, the court should have accepted that the termination relied on valid grounds – although not just grounds – and dismissed the plaintiff’s re-instatement case”.[1]
• The plaintiff was terminated for just cause on grounds that he shared an internal information on purpose and committed allegations and statements insulting the dignity and honour of the company and company representatives before other employees both verbally and by way of e-mail. [...] it must be accepted that the plaintiff’s correspondences cannot be evaluated as “making groundless statements and allegations insulting dignity and hour”. That said, the employee’s statements and correspondences, which are not gross enough, should be deemed valid grounds if disrupt the work order. E-mail correspondences in the file do not concern one single day, but rather qualify as continuous. Since the negative feedbacks of other employees complaining about the tone in these e-mails are presented in the file, the e-mail correspondences which disrupt the work peace and order must be deemed valid grounds for termination”.[2]

In light of the above, employees’ misbehaviours which do not qualify as just cause yet disrupt the workplace peace may constitute valid grounds for termination, depending on the specifics of each case. Before proceeding with termination on valid grounds, as a procedural step employers should ensure that they took the written defence of the employee regarding the employees’ misbehaviour.