Does the principle of “no two punishments for one incident” apply in employment management?

★Brief
Lu joined a car service company on 1 September 2018 and worked as a car parker and security guard.
On 25 August 2020, the company gave Lu a demerit for stepping on a billboard on 16 August 2020.
On 11 September 2020, the company issued a notice of termination of labor contract, which reads: “Lu: the labor contract you signed with the company for the period from 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2020 is now decided to be terminated from 12 September 2020 due to the following reason No.8., 1. Reasons for the termination of the employment contract ……8. Other reasons According to the Employee Handbook, Chapter 9, Section 2, Article 5, Points 3 and 25: those who gather a crowd and disrupt the work order; other major negligence or misconduct leading to serious consequences with significant circumstances. ……”
Lu applied for arbitration, requesting the company to pay compensation of RMB 13,000 for unlawful termination of the employment contract. The arbitration was not upheld and Lu appealed the arbitral award and sued to a district people’s court in Shanghai.

★The verdict

The court ruled in support of Lu’s claim. The court held that the company’s dismissal of Lu was based on the fact that he had intentionally stepped on a golf course billboard on 16 August 2020, which led to a physical confrontation with the course security guards and damaged the company’s image. According to the “Employee Award and Punishment Approval Form”, the company had given Lu a major demerit for stepping on the billboard. According to the principle of “no two punishments for one incident”, the company could not use the incident as a reason to terminate Lu’s labor contract. Therefore, the company’s decision to terminate Lu’s labor contract on this ground was clearly in breach of the law. Based on Lu’s working years and average monthly salary, the court supported Lu’s request for the defendant to pay him compensation for the illegal termination of his labor contract.

★ Comment of Lawyer Tang

Although the principle of “no two punishments for one incident” is a principle stipulated in administrative law, but in judicial practice, the principle of “no two punishments for one incident” has been widely used in the trial of various cases, as well in labor disputes. The principle of “no two punishments for one incident” refers to the fact that an offender shall not be punished twice or more than twice for the same offence on the same facts and on the same basis. The same fact here refers to the same illegal act, i.e., it is characterized by only one illegal act in terms of its constituent elements. In the field of labor law, it means that the employer is not able to repeatedly exercise the right to discipline the same worker for the same violation.

In this case, the company had already imposed the appropriate sanctions for Lu’s stepping on the billboard, and then terminated the labor contract based on the same act in accordance with the employee handbook, which the court found to be in breach of the principle of no two punishments for one incident.