Judgment No. 3173
Decision
The complaint is dismissed as irreceivable.
Summary
The complainant contests the refusal to grant her compensation for an illness which she considers as attributable to the performance of her official duties.
Consideration 14
Extract:
"The approach of the Organization, which is a reflection of the position adopted by the Managing Director, involves an assumption which would not, in all cases, be correct. The assumption is that work-related stress said by an employee to be the result of abuse and harassment, can only arise if, as an objective fact, there has been abuse and harassment. Such an approach takes no account of the possibility that stress can be the product of perceptions and not reality. Put slightly differently, an employee may be exposed to conduct which, viewed objectively, would not be characterised as abuse and harassment. But it does not follow that exposure to that conduct could not induce work-related stress in an employee who perceived that conduct as abusive and harassing. For this reason the answer to the question that was to be considered by the independent panel, i.e. whether the complainant had been subjected to “constant harassment and abuse” by her supervisor would not necessarily have answered the question raised by the complainant’s claim for compensation considered by the [Advisory Board on Compensation Claims]. Her claim raised the question of whether her supervisor’s conduct caused a stress-related illness not whether his conduct, viewed objectively, could be characterised as abuse and harassment."
Keywords
injury; advisory body; working conditions; service-incurred; compensation; harassment
Judgment keywords
Keywords
illness; service-incurred; compensation; complaint dismissed
|