Ill will at Pharmaco
CARMEL RICKARD: Pharmaco fires 'brilliant' rep for refusing 'degrading' test
The company has been taken to task by the labour appeal court for ‘manipulating’ an employee’s medical condition in order to fire her
No woman in her right mind would choose to work for Pharmaco Distribution. That was my conclusion this week after reading a judgment in a case involving the company and its CEO, Roberto Agustoni. This is the man who, in his court evidence, agreed that if a woman employee was “sluggish” at a “particular point of the month” he could insist she subject herself to an examination by the company’s appointed gynaecologist. Who, I wonder, would want to work with that threatened humiliation hanging over her head? It was also Agustoni who catapulted the company into litigation: having discovered that an “exceptional” sales rep was bipolar, he insisted that she submit to an examination by a company-appointed psychiatrist. When she refused, she was sacked for what the company called a “particularly serious and/or repeated wilful refusal to carry out lawful instructions”. The staffer, referred to by the labour court as EWN, had been involved in a dispute over what she claimed was short pay, with...
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