Luxury jeweler Fred, owned by LVMH, has been ordered to pay €6,000 to a former employee “due to the discriminatory harassment she suffered,” according to a ruling by the Paris Court of Appeal consulted on Tuesday. The former employee, who also contested her dismissal, was dismissed on this point.
Hired in January 2017 by the jeweler Fred as a saleswoman, she worked in a department store under the responsibility of a stand manager. In July 2018, she was summoned for a pre-dismissal interview. She was accused of having placed cash belonging to a customer in the Fred company’s professional safe. The saleswoman then contested this dismissal with the industrial tribunal and declared that she had suffered discriminatory harassment from her superior.
“Her manager called her a chinetok, in reference to her origins”
“Her manager called her Mulan, Chinese, Chinetok, in reference to her origins,” according to text messages and WhatsApp messages submitted to the debate, the Court of Appeal’s ruling details. The manager also criticized the saleswoman’s appearance and makeup.
In September 2017, the saleswoman and her colleagues explained the situation to Fred’s human resources department, but no investigation was conducted following this report, according to the complainant. “Fred categorically denies having been informed, during their presence and by anyone, of discriminatory remarks exchanged between these two former employees who both left the company in 2018 for other reasons,” the jeweler responded in a statement sent on Tuesday. “Such practices are intolerable and the company condemns them in the strongest possible terms,” it added.
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However, the manager was reprimanded after the complainant’s meeting with human resources. “While the employee does not provide evidence that her manager continued to make such comments after this reprimand, and never mentioned them again before her dismissal at the end of July 2018, it is nevertheless clear that she was subjected to these nicknames and remarks for several months before her employer intervened in September 2017. These facts constitute harassment and discrimination and caused harm to the employee during these few months, which the employer must compensate, even if they subsequently stopped,” the Court of Appeal ruled.