Technician fired over van GPS wins because no one told him

The High Court of Justice of the Basque Country (TSJ, the highest court in the region) has upheld a ruling that the dismissal of a pest control technician at a Bilbao company was unfair (despido improcedente). The company dismissed him because the GPS in his van did not match the job sheets he filled in himself, but the TSJ did not get as far as deciding whether those job sheets were false. The GPS data had been obtained without informing the employee as the law requires, and without it the dismissal letter lost its main evidence.

The decision is STSJ PV 3377/2026, dated 15 October (Labour Chamber, recurso de suplicación 1554/2026, the appeal heard by the regional High Court). The company has to choose between reinstating the technician, with back pay of €54.56 a day for the duration of the proceedings, or paying him €4,200.91 in severance, and it also has to pay €900 in legal costs for the appeal. The ruling is not final, because it can still be challenged through a recurso de casación para la unificación de doctrina, an appeal to the Supreme Court to unify case law.

Job sheets on a tablet and a van with GPS

The employee had been a senior technician (oficial de primera) since June 2023, on a salary of €1,659.45. He went from customer to customer carrying out pest control and Legionella treatments, and each job could take anywhere from 30 to 240 minutes. He logged the start and end of each job on a tablet. The company used those job sheets to check that the work had been done, to invoice the customer and to calculate his working hours. The van was leased, he could take it home so he didn’t waste time driving to the depot, and it was fitted with a geolocation system.

From July 2025 the company cross-checked the job sheets against the GPS data every day. According to the statement of charges, on several days that month the tablet placed the technician at a customer’s premises while the van was moving, and after the end of his working day the van made trips of between 3 and 20 kilometres. He replied that he had to move it because he couldn’t leave it parked in the same area for long, and that after finishing work he went for lunch at his daughter’s house before going back to his own.

On 26 September 2025 the company dismissed him for using the van for personal purposes on at least 11 days in July and for falsifying the job sheets and his working hours. The Court of First Instance of Bilbao ruled the dismissal unfair on 23 April 2026, and the TSJ has now upheld that ruling.

Tracking employees by geolocation requires informing them first

Article 90 of the LOPDGDD (Spain’s data protection act) allows companies to use geolocation data to monitor their staff, as part of the management powers set out in Article 20.3 of the Workers’ Statute (Spain’s main employment law). However, it sets a prior condition:

“los empleadores habrán de informar de forma expresa, clara e inequívoca a los trabajadores […] acerca de la existencia y características de estos dispositivos”, and also “acerca del posible ejercicio de los derechos de acceso, rectificación, limitación del tratamiento y supresión”

Translation: “employers must inform employees expressly, clearly and unequivocally […] about the existence and characteristics of these devices”, and also “about the possible exercise of the rights of access, rectification, restriction of processing and erasure”

The TSJ does not question GPS as such. “No negamos la legitimidad de la empresa para utilizar sistemas de geolocalización” (“We do not deny the company’s legitimacy in using geolocation systems”), the ruling says, provided those requirements are met. Here, neither was met. There was no evidence that the employee had been expressly informed about the GPS in the van or about his rights over his data.

The only reference to GPS was in section 3.6.1 of a 34-page employee handbook handed over on his first day:

“la compañía podrá equipar si así lo considera los vehículos con sistemas de control por geoposicionamiento”, with data that could be used “incluyendo las disciplinarias”

Translation: “the company may, if it sees fit, equip vehicles with geopositioning control systems”, with data that could be used “including for disciplinary purposes”

For the court, those expressions “son potestativas a futuro” (“are optional and refer to the future”) and are not the same as telling the employee that his van has a tracker.

In its appeal, the company also relied on an acknowledgement of receipt signed by the technician, listing several documents, including a clause informing him about the processing of his data. It made no difference. The court only had the list, not the content of those documents, and without the content it could not check whether they complied with Article 90. The argument that the employee knew about the GPS and that the system was proportionate also failed. The ruling does not dispute proportionality, but the failure to inform was enough to exclude the evidence.

The judge can exclude the evidence even if nobody asks

The technician did not challenge the GPS in his claim or at trial. He simply denied the facts. It was the Court of First Instance of Bilbao that, when handing down its judgment, checked of its own accord whether the system complied with the law. The company asked for the judgment to be annulled, arguing that it had been denied a proper defence and that the court had ruled on an issue nobody had raised.

The TSJ rejects this. Article 11.1 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (“no surtirán efecto las pruebas obtenidas […] violentando los derechos o libertades fundamentales”, that is, “evidence obtained […] in violation of fundamental rights or freedoms shall have no effect”) and Article 90.2 of the Labour Jurisdiction Act are mandatory rules, and according to the court:

“el Juez puede y debe de oficio rechazarla o no valorarla en sentencia, aunque la contraparte haya guardado silencio”

Translation: “the judge can and must, of their own motion, reject it or not take it into account in the judgment, even if the opposing party has remained silent”

In its appeal the company argued that it had other evidence, such as the technician’s own job sheets, the witnesses and an investigator’s report ratified at trial. The TSJ does not analyse them one by one. The facts in the dismissal letter rested on the GPS data and, without it, the court upholds the finding of unfair dismissal.

What would have saved the GPS evidence

In our view, the company came very close. When he received the van, the technician signed a document warning him that it was leased and for professional use only. That was the natural moment to tell him about the GPS. A paragraph in that same document, written in the present tense and referring to that specific van, would probably have changed the outcome. It would need to say that the van has a tracker, what data it stores, what that data is used for (including disciplinary purposes) and who to contact to exercise the rights of access, rectification, restriction and erasure.

There are three other points that any GPS policy should cover:

• Write in the present tense and be specific. “Podrá equipar si así lo considera” (“may, if it sees fit, equip”) describes a possibility. The law requires telling the employee that their vehicle has GPS and how it works.
• Keep the text of what you hand over, not just the signed receipt. A signed list of documents does not prove what they said. You need to be able to show the judge the exact text the employee received.
• Explain what happens outside working hours. If the van spends the night at the technician’s home, it is worth explaining whether the system also records those journeys and why. The employee raised the point (“el GPS no puede estar funcionando fuera de mi jornada de trabajo”, “the GPS can’t be running outside my working hours”) and the ruling does not address it, but the company would have avoided the argument by explaining it from the outset.

And if there are employee representatives, Article 90 requires them to be informed as well.

The same rule applies to clocking in with location

Article 90 makes no distinction between a tracker in a van and the location an app stores when someone clocks in. Both are geolocation used to monitor activity, and in both cases employees must be informed beforehand, ideally in writing so it can be proven. The difference lies in what is collected. A vehicle GPS follows the person’s position all day, whereas clocking in with location only stores where the person was at the moment they clocked in, a far smaller intrusion and much easier to justify. We explain it in our guide Is geolocation time tracking legal?.

The courts have accepted geolocation when the company informed employees properly. The High Court of Justice of Asturias upheld the dismissal of a technician who clocked out from home because the app only recorded the location at the moment of clocking in or out and the employee had been informed. And in Castile-La Mancha a company was able to reconstruct the working hours of an employee who refused to clock in using geolocation data.

In this case, the working hours and the length of each job were only recorded in the job sheets the technician filled in himself, and the only way to check them was continuous tracking that ended up excluded from the trial. A record of the time and location at the moment of clocking in, backed by properly drafted prior notice, gives the company a timestamped, located record that does not depend on what the employee writes down, without having to follow them all day. When that record is reliable, falsifying it does lead to a fair dismissal. And having a system available to the employee also counts in the company’s favour, as in the case of a manager who didn’t clock in.

How Cleverfy solves it

Cleverfy is time tracking and working-hours registration software for SMEs and self-employed businesses in Spain. In this ruling the problem was not using GPS, it was being unable to prove that staff had been informed beforehand. Cleverfy covers that step from two sides:

• It warns you when you switch on location. When you enable geolocation, Cleverfy reminds you that you must first have informed each employee (what data is collected, what for, how long it is kept and what rights they have) and links you to the legal guide. It won’t switch on until you confirm you have done so, so nobody finds out about the requirement when it’s too late. That confirmation is recorded, along with who gave it, when, and for which version of the notice.
• You send the information from Cleverfy and it leaves a trail (Documents module, Pro plan). You share your clock-in and location policy with your staff, each person confirms they have read it, and a PDF is kept with the exact version and the date and time of each confirmation. That is exactly what the company in this ruling was missing, as all it could show was a signed receipt listing documents.

And day to day, including for teams that work at customers’ premises or on the road:

• Only when clocking in, with no continuous tracking. Nothing is recorded between one clock-in and the next.
• Optional, because it is an extra that the company switches on. If your team always works in the same place, you don’t need it.
• One zone per site or per project: you set the radius of each workplace or, with the projects module, of each building site, residential community or client, and clock-ins made outside it are flagged without blocking anyone.
• Traceable corrections, with a record of who requested each change to a clock-in, who approved it and why.

You, or your employment adviser, decide what the information given to staff says. Cleverfy helps you make sure it reaches each person and lets you prove which version they received. You can explore location when clocking in and the document manager, try Cleverfy free for 14 days, book a demo or check our plans.

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This article provides general information about a specific court decision, which is not yet final, and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, it is advisable to consult an employment lawyer.

Sources:

• STSJ PV 3377/2026, dated 15 October (High Court of Justice of the Basque Country, Labour Chamber, appeal 1554/2026), CENDOJ
• Organic Law 3/2018 (LOPDGDD), Article 90
• Workers’ Statute, Article 20.3
• Law 36/2011, regulating the labour jurisdiction, Article 90.2
• Organic Law 6/1985, of the Judiciary, Article 11.1