Judgment No. 3610
Decision
1. The impugned decision of 13 December 2012 as well as the separation agreement of 29 March 2012 are set aside, as explained under 10.
2. The Global Fund shall pay the complainant the equivalent to three months’ gross salary in material damages.
3. It shall pay her moral damages in the amount of 50,000 Swiss francs.
4. It shall also pay her costs in the amount of 1,000 Swiss francs.
5. The complainant’s other claims are dismissed, as is the Global Fund’s counterclaim.
Summary
The complainant, a former employee of the Global Fund, challenges her separation agreement, alleging irregularities and abuse of authority.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
complaint allowed; decision quashed; termination of employment; flaw; misuse of authority; abuse of power
Consideration 8
Extract:
The Global Fund objects that as the complainant could challenge the decision to place her on a PIP, it cannot be considered that she signed the separation agreement under duress. The objection is not convincing. Every unlawful action vitiating consent, by its very nature, can be challenged, but even if it is not challenged this does not exclude the possibility that the consent may be vitiated. It must be noted that the lawfulness of the decision to offer the PIP was not considered to be settled but was a fundamental element of the process which led to the separation agreement. The complainant’s consent was vitiated by the fact that if she did not sign the separation agreement, she would have had to go through the PIP for which she was not eligible. Therefore, the Tribunal considers that the Global Fund imposed undue pressure which persuaded the complainant to consent to the separation agreement.
Keywords
duress
Consideration 9
Extract:
In the present case, the Global Fund used a tool (the PIP) which is explicitly designed to correct identified underperformance, to address an issue of potential future underperformance. The Tribunal finds the misuse of the PIP to be an abuse of authority which rendered the process non-transparent and arbitrary, as according to the defendant’s allegations the option of going through the PIP could be offered indistinctly to each employee.
Keywords
misuse of authority; abuse of power
|
