Short answer. No. Article 118 makes it unlawful for an employer to discharge or in any manner discriminate against an employee who has filed a complaint or instituted proceedings under the relevant Title, or who has testified or is about to testify in such proceedings. Retaliatory dismissal for that reason is itself a violation.
What the law says
Retaliatory measures. It shall be unlawful for an employer to refuse to pay or reduce the wages and benefits, discharge or in any manner discriminate against any employee who has filed any complaint or instituted any proceeding under this Title or has testified or is about to testify in such proceedings.
Labor Code, Article 118 — Retaliation Prohibited. Read the full provision →
What conduct the article prohibits
Article 118 bars an employer from four specific retaliatory acts against a covered employee: refusing to pay wages or benefits, reducing wages or benefits, discharging the employee, or discriminating against the employee in any manner. Dismissal is only one of the acts the article names; reducing pay or benefits, or discriminating short of outright termination, are treated the same way under this provision. The phrase "in any manner discriminate" is written broadly rather than as a closed list, which is why conduct short of firing or a pay cut, such as unfavorable reassignment, can still fall within what the article addresses.
Who is protected, and for what conduct
The protection covers an employee who has filed any complaint or instituted any proceeding under this Title, or has testified or is about to testify in such proceedings. That protects not only the person who actually files the complaint, but also a coworker who testifies, or who is about to testify, in a proceeding someone else started. Being a witness carries the same protection under this article as being the complainant. Note also what the article does not require. It protects an employee who has filed a complaint; nothing in the wording makes the protection depend on the complaint succeeding, or even on it turning out to be well founded. An employer who dismisses a complainant and later shows the underlying claim was wrong has not thereby answered the charge under this article.
The complaint has to relate to the Title this article sits in
The article's protection is tied to proceedings under this Title, meaning the article addresses retaliation connected to the specific part of the Labor Code it belongs to, rather than functioning as a stand-alone rule covering every conceivable grievance an employee might raise. What matters is that the complaint or proceeding falls within that Title's subject matter, not merely that some kind of workplace complaint was filed. The words or is about to testify deserve their own notice, because they push the protection earlier than most people assume. An employee who has not yet appeared, and who has so far only been named or summoned as a witness, is already within the article — retaliation does not have to wait for the testimony to be given before it becomes unlawful.
What the article does not spell out
Article 118 does not itself describe how a retaliation complaint is filed, what evidence establishes the retaliatory link between the complaint and the adverse action, or what remedy follows a violation. Those questions are not answered by this article's text. What the article does make clear is that being dismissed, demoted in pay, or otherwise treated adversely because you filed a complaint or are expected to testify is not something the employer is free to do. What decides such a case in practice is the sequence. The dates on which the complaint was filed and on which the adverse measure was taken, what reason the employer gave in writing at the time, and how comparable employees who filed nothing were treated are the things that make a retaliatory link visible or not.