The arrival of new technologies in every sphere today is also having a significant reach in the world of work, to the point of becoming a genuine challenge because of the impact it is having through the loss and destruction of jobs by companies.<\/p>\n
The International Labour Organization (ILO)<\/a>, on the occasion of its centenary, presented at the beginning of the year the Report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work<\/a>, warning that the introduction of new techniques into companies’ production systems, through digitalization, artificial intelligence, or robotics, must be instruments for the creation of new opportunities<\/strong>. Not only to improve productivity, but also to create employment, and not as elements for its destruction. In this regard, the ILO considers that in the current situation of precariousness, and in view of the new technological opportunities that are changing the labor market, it is necessary to train workers on an ongoing basis to adapt them to new technologies, taking advantage of this evolution and automation of processes that are increasingly present in organizations. In this way, the goal should be, as the ILO states, to adopt measures so that workers can adapt to future changes and inequality does not grow, to the point of asserting that “the final decisions affecting <\/em>work must be made by human beings and not by algorithms”.<\/em><\/p>\n But it is true that the replacement of workers by innovative automation systems that make work easier, apart from representing an improvement in production processes, also entails a short-term loss of jobs and the elimination of positions for technological reasons<\/strong>. In fact, with the increasingly frequent presence of robots and machines, repetitive tasks tend to be eliminated, making it possible to optimize resources and activities that help improve competitiveness (as was the case in their day with ticket clerks or fare collectors in public transport, supermarket cashiers, or assembly line workers, among many other examples). Indeed, some recent studies carried out by BBVA Research<\/a> and by Caixabank Research<\/a>, on its impact on the Spanish labor market, confirm the growing trend toward automation, such that between 69% and 71% of jobs in Spain are at medium-high risk.<\/p>\n Faced with this increasingly frequent situation, what is the scope of the automation of systems and the adoption of these measures in the workplace? Is contract termination on productive or technical grounds possible? Where is the line that determines whether a dismissal is fair or unfair?<\/em><\/p>\n Well, analyzing the impact in our labor sphere, in the Judgment of the High Court of Justice of Castilla y Le\u00f3n, sitting in Burgos, of July 23, 2009, Appeal No. 463\/2009<\/strong><\/a>, the dismissal of a 3rd-grade welder was recognized as fair when the company gradually introduced a robot-based welding system, rendering redundant those welders who carried out the work of manufacturing parts for motor vehicle factories that required welding, thereby optimizing resources in a faster and more effective way. These specific “difficulties”<\/em> in the company were considered sufficient to justify, in this case, dismissal under Article 52 c) of the Workers’ Statute<\/a> and to guarantee the proper functioning of the company, in accordance with the “demands of demand”<\/em> (productive grounds), to acquire a better “competitive position in the market”<\/em> due to the technological lag in the means of production (technical grounds), and even through the implementation of “work systems and methods”<\/em> that entailed the restructuring of staff (organizational grounds). In other words, it would not be necessary for situations to arise that pose a real threat to the future viability of the company or its employment.<\/p>\n However, and in the opposite direction, it is worth mentioning the Judgment of the Labor Court No. 10 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, of September 23, 2019<\/strong><\/a>, in which the objective dismissal is recognized as unfair. In the specific case, an administrative employee performing accounting officer duties is dismissed on productive, organizational, and technical grounds upon replacing SAP (Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing)<\/em>, used as an applications and products system for data processing in business management, making it possible to plan and manage resources through different modules in the Finance, Logistics, and Human Resources areas.<\/p>\n The fact of subsequently acquiring a license for new software, consisting of Robotic Process Automation<\/em> (RPA), to improve repetitive and mechanical tasks, such as the management and claiming of payments, as well as their offsetting, is the ground on which the company tries to base the worker’s dismissal for objective reasons.<\/p>\n