Dismissal in PR government: just cause and a hearing

What "job security" means and what it does not

**Section 6.6 of Act 8-2017** opens by recognizing what many people assume without having read it: **career employees with regular status shall have job security**. But the same sentence sets the condition, and that is the part that gets forgotten: **provided they satisfy the criteria of productivity, efficiency, order and the discipline that must prevail in public service**.

Those criteria are not a matter of free appraisal. The statute assigns them to the Office, which is required to **create and design the system for evaluating performance, productivity, output and effective compliance, using quantifiable metrics**. And agencies and instrumentalities **are required to evaluate their employees using that system**, not an improvised one of their own.

From that comes the first useful question to ask if a performance complaint reaches you: **what is the metric, and where are my evaluations?** If the file has no evaluations done with the system, the base on which the statute builds everything else is missing.

The ladder: from verbal warning to dismissal

When an employee's conduct does not meet established standards and requirements, each agency **shall take the necessary and appropriate corrective measures or disciplinary actions**. The statute names four, and the order it lists them in is no accident:

• **Verbal warning.**
• **Written reprimand.**
• **Suspension from employment and pay.**
• **Dismissal.**

The two guarantees in subsection 4

This is the heart of the section and worth reading in full. The statute says the **Nominating Authority may only suspend from employment and pay or dismiss any career employee for just cause**, and adds two prior requirements that are not optional: **prior notice of written charges** and **a warning of their right to request a prior hearing**, in accordance with the **progressive discipline** processes as established in the regulation.

Broken down, four things must be present before you are suspended without pay or dismissed:

Note the word **"warning"**. It is not enough that the right to a prior hearing exists: the notice must **tell you about it**. A charge letter that does not mention you may request a prior hearing is missing an element the statute requires, and that is a concrete point to raise in writing and dated.

Note also **"progressive discipline"**. The statute leaves the detail to regulation, but the concept is incorporated by reference in the text itself: the sanction is built in steps, and jumping from nothing to dismissal calls for an explanation that has to be in the charges.

• **That you are a career employee**, the subsection 4 guarantee is written for that category.
• **Just cause**, not convenience or discomfort.
• **Written charges**, served before the action.
• **A warning of your right to request a prior hearing**, within that same notice.

Summary suspension and the ten days that follow

There is an exception to the sequence above, and the statute bounds it carefully. **When the conduct charged to the employee constitutes a real or potential situation of danger to the health, life, property or morals of the agency's employees or of the citizenry in general**, Nominating Authorities **may carry out summary suspensions**; that is, remove you immediately without the prior hearing.

But the exception comes with its own clock, and it is short: **in such cases they shall be required to hold the informal hearing within the term of ten (10) days following the suspension action**.

"Required" and "within ten days" are the two phrases to hold onto. Summary suspension is not an indefinite limbo while things are investigated: the statute conditions it on the informal hearing happening within those ten days. If they pass and nobody has summoned you, you have a point with a date and a text behind it.

And the threshold is not just anything either. The statute does not say "when the agency deems it convenient": it says **real or potential danger to health, life, property or morals**. A disagreement with a supervisor or a performance matter does not fit that description, and if you are summarily suspended over something like that, it is worth requesting in writing which of those four dangers was alleged.

If you are unionized, and if you are on probation

Subsection 7 opens a door that changes the map for many people: **agencies may negotiate with their union representatives the procedures to be used in imposing disciplinary measures**. And the statute sets a floor for those negotiated procedures: **they shall contain the mechanisms necessary to guarantee due process of law and to protect employees against arbitrary dismissals and separations**.

That is: if you are unionized, your disciplinary procedure may not be the general regulation's but the one your union negotiated, and what that procedure cannot do is fall below due process. So the first thing to read is your agreement, not the agency's regulation.

The **probationary period** has its own rule, in subsection 11. A career employee may be separated **during or at the end of their probationary period** when it is determined that **their progress and adaptability to current standards have not been satisfactory**, and the statute adds a condition that gets overlooked: **after having been duly oriented and trained**.

And here comes the distinction that can save your job. If you are separated **for your performance in the service and not for habits and attitudes**, and **immediately before that appointment you had served satisfactorily as a regular employee in another position**, you have **the right to be reinstated in a position equal or similar to the one you held with regular status**. If the separation is **for habits or attitudes**, then the agency must go through the dismissal procedure, with everything that entails.

Two more scenarios complete the picture. A **transitory employee** may be separated before their appointment expires, but **for just cause and in accordance with due process of law**. And in case of **conviction** for a felony, a crime involving moral turpitude or breach of official duties, separation proceeds under **Article 208 of the Political Code of 1902**; if the convicted person is granted the benefit of serving in the community, **Act 70 of 1963** and the rehabilitation procedure of Section 6.8 of this same act come into play.

What to do the day the letter arrives

Order matters, because almost everything the statute gives you is exercised in writing and against a clock.

• **Fix the notice date**, not the conversation date. Keep the document and proof of the day you received it.
• **Look in the letter for the warning of your right to request a prior hearing.** If it is not there, note it: the statute requires the notice to include it.
• **Read whether these are written charges or a lesser measure.** Verbal warning and written reprimand are not the same as suspension from employment and pay or dismissal, and only the latter two trigger the subsection 4 guarantee.
• **If you are unionized, go to the agreement first.** The disciplinary procedure may be negotiated, with its own steps and deadlines.
• **If you were summarily suspended, count ten days** from the suspension action. Within that term they must hold the informal hearing.
• **Request a copy of your file and your evaluations.** The statute requires the agency to evaluate using the Office's system; if there are no evaluations, that is part of your case.