Judgment No. 403
Decision
1. It is declared that the request for the withdrawal of the memorandum of 30 December 1975 was justified. 2. The decision of the Director-General given on 3 April 1978 is quashed.
Consideration 18
Extract:
The Director-General issued the complainant, the chairman of a staff association not recognised by the organization, instructions concerning time off in two memoranda. The Tribunal believes that the Director drew clearly erroneous conclusions from the dossier. By way of relief the complainant asks for the withdrawal of the documents mentioned from her file. "The Tribunal considers that in this case the quashing of the decision will afford all the relief necessary."
Keywords
personal file; warning; staff union; time off; staff representative; application for quashing; mistaken conclusion
Consideration 2
Extract:
Under the applicable provision, a formal warning is equated with a written reprimand, but is declared not to be a disciplinary measure. "The decision to warn is one over which the Tribunal exercises only a limited power of review".
Keywords
disciplinary measure; censure; warning; judicial review
Consideration 15
Extract:
Nothing in the dossier confutes the complainant's repeated assertion that she never took time off without permission. In drawing from the dossier "the conclusion that the complainant had taken the decision that she, and only she, would decide how much time she would devote to her duties and that she did not regard it as necessary to obtain the approval of her supervisor [...] the Director-General drew a conclusion that was clearly mistaken."
Keywords
unauthorised absence; staff union activity; time off; staff representative; mistaken conclusion
Consideration 3
Extract:
"It is [...] generally accepted that the existence of a good and efficient staff association is essential to good staff relations and so is a concern of the administration. All organisations therefore have in their regulations a section [...] in which the ways of maintaining contact between the administration and the staff association are described."
Keywords
staff regulations and rules; provision; staff union; freedom of association; organisation's interest
Consideration 3
Extract:
"What is not described in the regulations are the facilities which, because of the administration's interest in the efficient working of the staff association, it is now customary for the administration to guarantee or provide. The most important of these is permission for the chairman and other officers of the association to take 'time off' within reasonable limits for the association's work." There are others: the provision of office space, the collection of subscriptions to the association (by deduction with the member's consent of dues from pay).
Keywords
practice; no provision; staff union; freedom of association; facilities; time off
Consideration 3
Extract:
"The organization, in common with all others, recognises the right of the staff in accordance with the principle of freedom of association [...] to organise [...]. Nor is it disputed that it is for the staff to organise itself and not for the Director-General to organise it."
Keywords
independence; staff union; freedom of association; executive head
Consideration 16
Extract:
The complainant was urged by the organisation not to use official stationery for communications of a non-recognised staff association. The Tribunal does not believe that the use of inter-office memoranda could be interpreted as giving an official character to the correspondence. "The Tribunal does not consider that the position is so clear or the offence, if there was one, so heinous as to call for a warning of severe disciplinary measures."
Keywords
proportionality; misconduct; disciplinary measure; warning; staff representative
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