Sometimes a workplace dispute does not begin with a resignation letter. It begins with a missing salary payment, an angry chat, a uniform, and two people who stop understanding each other.

That is what happened in a Curaçao employment case decided by the Common Court of Justice in July 2026.

The WhatsApp messages mattered. They started and documented the chain of events. But they did not, by themselves, end the employee’s contract. The Court looked at everything that happened before and after them.

It started with unpaid salary

The employee had worked as an on-call security guard for her employer, since October 2022. She said she had not received her salary for November 2023. Her wages were normally paid into her sister’s bank account.

From 5 December, she stopped going to work.

That day, she sent several angry WhatsApp messages to her employer. One of them said that she would give employer’s uniforms back to “Jay.” This was not just a casual reference. The uniform was company property issued to her for work.

After the messages, the employer blocked her on WhatsApp.

At that point, there was a serious employment dispute: an employee who said she had not been paid, who had stopped working, who was talking about returning her uniform, and an employer who had cut off contact.

The first messages did not end the contract

This is an important part of the ruling.

The Court found that the messages on 5 December, including the reference to returning the uniform, were not clear enough on their own to count as a resignation. If the story had ended there, the outcome could have been different.

The legal turning point came later.

SOAW prompted a direct conversation

On 18 December, the employer unblocked the employee after being told by the Ministry of Social Development, Labour and Welfare, known as SOAW, to contact her.

He asked what she wanted to do regarding the employer.

She replied that she did not want to continue with the company and went on to complain about management and the employer’s leadership style.

The employer replied that, based on what he had heard through SOAW, he had thought she wanted to return to work. But after reading her messages, he understood that she did not want to work for the employer anymore.

That was not an assumption made in silence. He communicated that understanding directly to her.

She did not correct him.

What happened afterwards mattered too

In January and February, the WhatsApp exchanges continued. But they were about the uniform and the overdue salary, not about returning to work.

On 20 March, roughly three months later, the employee said that she wanted to return and asked what had happened to her salary. Her position was that she had been angry about not being paid and had used the messages to put pressure on her employer. She said that she had not truly intended to resign and depended financially on the job.

That argument is understandable. But the Court did not accept it.

Why the Court ruled that the resignation counted

The Court stressed that an employer may not quickly assume that an employee has resigned. A resignation should be clear and unambiguous, because it can mean losing income and employment protection. Depending on the circumstances, an employer may have to check what the employee really means.

In this case, the employer did check.

The first messages on 5 December were not enough. But by 18 December, the employee had been away from work for nearly two weeks. After SOAW became involved, the employer contacted her directly and asked whether she wanted to return. She said that she did not want to continue with the employer. When he said that he understood she did not want to work there anymore, she did not say that he had misunderstood her.

The later messages also did not show that she was available to return to work.

Taken together, the Court found that the employer could reasonably rely on her resignation. Her employment contract ended on 18 December 2023.

She was awarded the outstanding salary owed up to that date. She was not awarded salary after 18 December, was not reinstated, and was ordered to pay Cg 4,000 in appeal costs.

Can you return after asking to resign?

You can ask. But it is not automatic.

If you immediately clarify that you did not mean to resign, an employer should take that seriously and should not jump to conclusions. But once a resignation is clear, the employer has checked what you mean, and the employer can reasonably rely on your answer, it may be too late to simply change your mind.

That is what made the difference in this case. It was not one WhatsApp message. It was the full sequence: the unpaid salary dispute, stopping work, discussing the uniform, the blocked contact, SOAW’s involvement, the direct clarification on 18 December, and the absence of a correction afterwards.

Source: Common Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, 28 July 2026, ECLI:NL:OGHACMB:2026:238. Full ruling: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI%3ANL%3AOGHACMB%3A2026%3A238

This briefing explains a publicly available court ruling for general information. It is not legal advice. Each employment dispute depends on its own facts.