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Sat 31 Mar, 2007 01:03 pm
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Quote:Sacked "petite anglaise" blogger wins compensation claim Fri Mar 30, 4:52 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - A British secretary sacked for blogging on the job under the pseudonym of "La Petite Anglaise" has won a compensation claim case against the Paris office of British accounting firm Dixon Wilson.
A Paris labour tribunal, or "prud'hommes", ruled on Thursday that the firm pay Catherine Sanderson, 34, 44,000 euros (58,800 US dollars), tantamount to a year's salary, following her dismissal last April for alleged misconduct.
Sanderson's blog about daily life built up a sizeable international following, with many people reading her diary-style accounts about work, relationships and the travails of single-motherhood.
"I'm so relieved that good sense has prevailed," Sanderson told AFP on Friday.
The reasons behind the tribunal's decision in the case, one of the first of its kind in France, will be released in two weeks.
Sanderson said managers had discovered from reading the blog that on two occasions she had lied about having nanny problems to take the afternoon off. They also objected to her using the computer in office hours to write the blog.
"I always felt that my dismissal was an unnecessarily harsh sanction and clearly the prud'hommes shared my view,"she said.
Dixon Wilson, which offers tax and financial advice to private clients in Britain and France, refused to comment on Friday. The company has a month to appeal.
I don't know about this one. Normally I side with the employee, but after all you are paid to work for the company during working hours.
They caught her in two small fibs for taking personal time, which really doesn't mean much but might provide grounds for dismissal if the employer wants to be persnickety.
I think a lot depends on how much time she was spending on the blog, and what steps the company took to warn her about it.
I hope she thinks the international acclaim for her blog was worth it. As a secretary, she was pulling in $60,000 a year. That's executive-type money. The company paid her well.
Well, for Paris and that kind of job (she must fluent in both languages as well) 44,000/year sounds okay, certainly not too much.
I guess the two language requirement would raise the pay somewhat.
I wouldn't hold any salary against anyone, if you can get the money good for you.
I was just basing my comment on the fact that the median US income is about $32,000 a year. So she is getting about twice that, for a non executive job. There are people in sizable companies who have people they are in charge of who get paid less than that. So I think the company has the right to expect that she would be working for them during working hours, not blogging her time away.
Again, a lot depends on what steps the company took about her blogging. I would think the woman would be entitled to at least a couple of warnings, which she may have gotten-I don't know. But I am not unsypathetic to the employer here, from what I can see of the story.
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