Please be informed that Mexican labor authorities issued a binding criterion, in terms of which the complexity for resignation letters to be valid within litigation, increases significantly.
If an employee argues within a labor complaint that he/she was obligated to resign, the employer will be required to submit the original resignation letter which shall “reflect convincingly and congruently, the will, autonomy and spontaneity of the employee” to terminate his/her employment. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if the employee provides indications that generate “suspicion, doubt or mere probability” regarding his/her intention to resign, the labor authority shall analyze and determine the validity of the resignation at its sole discretion.
In case labor authorities fail to acknowledge the validity of a resignation letter because of this binding criterion, it is likely that the termination of employment is considered as a wrongful dismissal.
The foregoing is relevant since most of the resignation letter forms used by companies in Mexico as of today, do not comply with the validity requirements imposed by this new precedent. To mitigate contingencies, we recommend reviewing the templates that are currently used to terminate employment relationships.