Judgment No. 4479
Decision
The complaints are dismissed.
Summary
The complainants challenge the changes made with respect to their salary resulting from the decision of the Director-General to implement the unified salary scale as adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
icsc decision; salary; precedent; complaint dismissed
Consideration 1
Extract:
Twenty-one members of the staff of the ILO have filed complaints with the Tribunal. They each challenge their January 2018 payslip and indirectly challenge a general decision altering the basis on which they were remunerated. The complaints should be joined so that one judgment can be rendered, as they raise identical legal and factual issues.
Keywords
joinder
Consideration 2
Extract:
The payslips reflect a decision to introduce a unified salary scale eliminating the distinction between staff who were single and those with dependents.
Keywords
payslip
Consideration 3
Extract:
A central argument is that the elimination of the distinction between staff who were single and those with dependents involved the breach of an acquired right. This argument has been considered in other proceedings involving another organisation. It was rejected by the Tribunal (see Judgment 4381). There was, in this respect, no material difference between the circumstances of the complainant in the earlier proceedings and the circumstances of the complainants in these, nor any material difference in the arguments advanced and considered. Accordingly, the Tribunal should, for reasons of consistency, adopt and apply the analysis and conclusion in Judgment 4381.
Reference(s)
Jugement(s) TAOIT: 4381
Keywords
precedent
Consideration 10
Extract:
The complainants refer to the Tribunal’s case law which identifies a duty on an organisation which adopts standards or elements of the UN common system, to assess the lawfulness of those standards or elements before implementing them (see, for example, Judgments 1265, consideration 24, 1765, consideration 8, and 2420, consideration 11). They contend the ILO failed in its duty to assess the lawfulness of the unified salary scale by simply relying on the legal opinion obtained from the OLA by the ICSC. How this duty can be satisfied must vary according to the circumstances. The OLA’s advice was, in relation to the unified salary scale and acquired rights, correct. The import of that advice was made known to the ILO in the period leading up to the implementation of the unified salary scale. There is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that the ILO or any of its officers thought the advice was wrong. In these circumstances, the ILO discharged the duty the case law imposes.
Reference(s)
Jugement(s) TAOIT: 1265, 1765, 2420
Keywords
icsc decision; lawfulness of a measure
Consideration 11
Extract:
[I]n substance, this plea is no more than a recitation of findings, observations and conclusions in a passage in a judgment, quoted in the brief, on this topic by the United Nations Dispute Tribunal, Judgment UNDT/2017/098 (a judgment vacated on appeal by Judgment 2018-UNAT-841 of the United Nations Appeals Tribunal). This Tribunal is not bound to accept such findings, observations and conclusions and all the more so in the absence of evidence supportive of them.
Keywords
unat; case law of other tribunals
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