A Lidl manager is suing his former bosses after the supermarket chain dismissed him for working too hard. The manager, known only as Jean P., would spend hours shelf-stacking, checking orders and price-checking from 5am to make sure the Barcelona branch was ready for when the sales staff arrived.
He was dismissed by supermarket bosses who claimed he had breached Lidl’s rules banning unpaid overtime. A dismissal letter accused him of ‘very serious laboural unfulfillment’ after regional bosses checked the shop’s CCTV security footage.
Bosses say he often started work up to an hour and a half before clocking in and was regularly in the branch alone, also a breach of company rules. Lidl said in Jean’s dismissal letter that he had broken a regulation banning unpaid overtime that states ‘every minute worked is paid, and every minute that is worked should be clocked in’.
But an employment court heard that Lidl admitted that it had never instructed Jean, who had worked for the company for 12 years, not to come in early. And his lawyer Juan Guerra stated that Lidl only benefited from any breach of the rules. He said: ‘He is sanctioned for working too much – something that is unusual – and also for making an effort to get the shop running properly.
The lawyer claimed his client only worked longer hours because he was under pressure to meet sales and performance targets in a restructuring programme. He said: ‘The heads of the supermarket knew this and were aware that these changes required time and dedication.’ The case is ongoing.
