France: Employee who suffered “boredom at work” awarded €40k damages | Hacker News Reader

France: Employee who suffered “boredom at work” awarded €40k damages

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19 pointssamizdis19 comments

This article is a bit misleading. He didn't just have a boring job, they wanted to fire him but because of the labor law in France they couldn't easily do this, so they gave him nothing to do as a form of harassment to try to get him to quit (more details here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/frenchman-take... - he was "mise au placard"). This is similar to what got France Télécom in trouble for.

Apparently it's a thing in Japanese companies for the so called "salarymen". Because the general expectation around these jobs is that they are for life, it's frowned upon to let someone go - instead, you will be sent to the corporation's rural office, with literally nothing to do 8 hours a day. It's designed as both a form of punishment and as a way to make someone quit.

A stupid question maybe, but if they are paid full salary for doing nothing why can't they use corporate time to work on something else so they get 2 salaries?

It's almost certainly against contract and would give the company justification for firing them.

For anyone interested in reading more, it's called the Boredom/banishment room

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banishment_room

So, constructive dismissal.

I'm afraid France Télécom didn't just give their employees "nothing to do", they actively made their employees' work life hell and harassed them psychologically, resulting in 35 suicides.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_France_Télécom (this article is written rather poorly but the referenced newspaper articles explain it quite well)

When I read that I end up thinking that labor laws end up having unintended consequences. If you make it impossible to fire people, they end up being abused (I don't think that's ok, but it's absurd that we could connive a legal structure to somehow make unwanted employees appreciated).

Can't say if this is the case, but due to harsh laws when trying to fire employees in Europe (sometimes having to pay years of salary), companies are known to use this tactic to get people to quit.

My mother worked in a bank and even 20 years ago I was told by her stories of some employees been assigned a desk in an empty room and pretty much no work until they quit (this was the time before Facebook and even phone/internet at work, so you didn't do anything else but look at empty papers/walls)

Very common tactic in Europe indeed. The new thing is that now employees retaliate... and win.

Harsh? This beats getting fired on a whim by miles!

Yeah, it's tempting to use the example to show that "labour laws" of this kind are obviously wrong, but occasional stories like this are a blessing compared to some of the alternatives.

It depends. One of the reasons economists point to the youth employment/wage problem and non 'standard' contracts in countries with these laws are situations like this, as firing older bad performant employees is too expensive and hard. If I work in a company for 20 years, and I have 15 years to retirement, I can decide to spend my entire day browsing Facebook and most companies will have some difficulty firing me as they will probably have to pay between 3 and 5 years of wages and even risk a lawsuit like this.

My ex-mother-in-law had a factory, and when she caught an employee stealing (taking already made products home), she was fired on the spot, and after a year long battle, the court forced her to be re-admitted and paid lost wages. (our labour court is very very very pro employee to a stupid degree, but final decision was basically : 'she doesn't get paid enough and needed the money, so it isn't her fault')

I think there needs to be a balance. Firing an employee can't be so expensive that after a certain time an employee can do whatever they want and not face consequences, and employees should still have some financial and personal responsibility if they need to fire someone.

can't edit, should have been " employeers should still have some financial and personal responsibility if they need to fire someone.

Passive income! /s

This is quite a peculiar ruling to say the very least, especially when the employee have not raised any complaints prior to suing at tribunal.

This is the typical line of defense used by harassers when brought to court « I can’t be an harasser because there was no previous or other complain ». Sorry, it doesn’t work like this. Presumed harassers have to explain why the supporting evidence provided by the accusing party is not valid.

I’d say this is very typical actually. There was a CIO at work that people tiptoed around due to bullying. People would walk down to HR, and HR would convince them not to bother complaining... in a nice way of course. Eventually it was my turn and after insisting my complaint be heard, it went nowhere. HR can sometimes be pros for sweeping complaints under the rug.

"the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that ‘bore out’ was indeed a form of moral harassment."

That's... interesting to say the least. On the other hand, such a ruling might encourage companies to adopt more flexible hours for employees to only do work when needed. I imagine it would have more of an impact in office jobs where a lot of work can just be done remotely from home. That said, you'd have thought this employee would've been let go early on if they didn't really need him.

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