Understanding Employment Contract Termination: Articles 159-161
Article 159: Termination of Employment Contract
The employment contract will end in the following cases:
- Mutual agreement of the parties.
- Resignation of the employee, giving notice to the employer with at least thirty days’ notice.
- Death of the worker.
- Deadline agreed in the contract.
- Conclusion of the work or service which gave rise to the contract.
- Unforeseeable circumstances or force majeure.
Article 160: Termination Without Compensation
The employment contract ends without the right to compensation when the employer terminates it by invoking one or more of the following reasons:
1. Serious Misconduct
Some misconduct of a serious nature, duly verified, which are outlined below:
- a) Lack of honesty of the employee in the performance of their duties;
- b) Conduct constituting sexual harassment;
- c) Ways in fact exercised by the employee against the employer or employee who serves in the same company;
- d) Insults hurled by the worker to the employer;
- e) Misconduct of the employee relating to the company where he works.
2. Unauthorized Business Negotiations
Negotiations run by the worker in the course of business and which have been banned in writing in the contract by the employer.
3. Unjustified Absence
No crowd of workers to their jobs without cause for two days, two Mondays in the month or a total of three days during the same period of time also, the unexcused absence, or without notice to the employee which he has to by an activity, task or machine whose abandonment or suspension means a serious disruption in the progress of the work.
4. Walkout by Workers
Understood as:
- a) Untimely and unwarranted departure from the worker the task site and during working hours without permission of the employer or his representative;
- b) The refusal to work without just cause in the tasks agreed in the contract.
5. Actions Affecting Safety
Acts, omissions, or rash actions that affect the safety or operation of the facility, security, or the activities of employees or their health.
6. Intentional Damage
Intentionally caused material injury on the premises, machinery, tools, work tools, products, or merchandise.
7. Serious Breach of Obligations
Serious breach of their obligations under the contract.
Article 161: Termination Based on Company Needs
Without prejudice to that stated in previous articles, the employer may terminate the employment contract as grounds by invoking the needs of the enterprise, establishment or service, such as those resulting from the rationalization and modernization of the same, low productivity, changes in market conditions or the economy, which would require the separation of one or more workers.
Article 1
People are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The family is the fundamental unit of society. The State recognizes and protects the intermediate groups through which society organizes and structures and ensures the adequate autonomy to meet their own specific purposes.
Article 2
Are emblems national flag, coat of arms of the Republic and the national anthem.
Article 3
The State of Chile is unitary. The state administration is functionally and geographically decentralized, or devolved as appropriate, in accordance with the law. State bodies will promote the strengthening of regionalization of the country and equitable development and solidarity between the regions, provinces and communes of the country.
Article 4
Chile is a democratic republic.
Article 5
Sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. It is exercised by the people through plebiscites and periodic elections, and also by the authorities established by this Constitution. No section of the people nor any individual can claim to exercise.
Article 6
State bodies must submit their action to the Constitution and the rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and guarantee the institutional order of the Republic.
The provisions of this Constitution are binding on the holders or members of such bodies as any person, institution or group.
Violation of this rule will generate the liabilities and penalties prescribed by law.