LABOR RELATIONSHIP CASE

 

Case study: The Association REHADROG

REHADROG Association is a nonprofit organization that works in Spain and has rehabilitation centers in different regions. Its purpose is to help to overcome drug addiction and rehabilitation of dependents.

To accomplish this objective REHADROG has several programs to help people who voluntarily want to detoxify and rejoin society.

Integration therapy is conducted in partnership centers where inmates live, stay overnight, eat and live. It also provides medical support, crisis attendance, accompanied with medical visits, and it also monitors legal cases inmates may have from courts. In sum, they help in all those areas that need while they remain in the center, while they are unable to overcome their precarious situation so that they can begin again to be autonomously independent. None of these benefits have have any cost. Everything is paid with collected donations from the organization, and with money collected from recovered furniture sales done in centers.

Part of the therapy to overcome drug addiction consists of activities done by internals to regain confidence in themselves. They spend three stages:

A first stage consists in start a phase of detoxification and requires specialized care and continuously monitoring to avoid consumption.

A second phase where therapy is directed to the internal regain confidence in themselves by giving them specific tasks.

The third stage is scheduled for reintegration and provided for inmates who are ready to disassociate themselves from school and rejoin into society.

One of the inmates volunteer center Granollers, Garcia, who passed the first stage, entered into a program of recovery and restoration of old furniture and old clothes which had developed a serie of tasks (a working therapy program, which is the objective of the second phase treatment).

The association has a storage space and a workshop space where inmates can restore old furniture and where you can make a selection of clothing that can be reused. This activity makes acquire increasingly greater personal autonomy to the internal, and makes him realize that they are able themselves to develop productive activities.

It is clear that none of the activities in the centers of any REAHDROG inmates receive any financial compensation. These activities are not considered employment relationship.

Garcia never behaved like an internal model. From the first day he tried to break the rules and went abroad looking for consuming again. Even more, in one occasion he was away for three days and called then asking Rehadrog to pick up him because he felt groggy. One other occasion also showed violent behavior and needed medical care to calm down him. Several internal reports described him as somebody with unappropriate attitude wit no positive results with actual therapy.

Finally, the Director of the Center in Granollers said Garcia had to leave the therapy program because all described facts and his bad attitude, contrary to internal rules that must be respected by all patients.

Now Garcia has claimed compensation for termination of employment claiming he is an furniture assembler and recoverer in the an center storage, with right to last six months salaries for the developed work in the furniture workshop recovery workcenter

Based on these data, arguing these questions:

  1. What rule do you think applies to the relationship that binds Garcia in the center?
  2. According to the characteristics that determine the existence of an employment relationship, argue whether we are facing an employment relationship or not.
  3. What steps do you think could perform the association to avoid these problems again?