Employee fired from Management Consulting company for not wanting to participate in After work activities like drinking and promiscuity

Published November 27, 2022 | By NewsJive.com

A French employee was fired for not wanting to participate in “After work” activities containing heavy drinking and all kinds of promiscuous behavior, as a part of the employers mandatory program of “team-building” by “having fun”.

This incident took place in 2015 at a Paris Management Consulting Company called Cubik Partners. Cubik Partners fired the employee over “professional inadequacy,” claiming he failed to cultivate the company’s party atmosphere. The fired employee took the case to court and demanded that he has the right to say no to not having fun after work.

Apparently the “team-building” procedures included “seminars and end-of-week drinks frequently ending up in excessive alcohol intake, encouraged by associates who made very large quantities of alcohol available”.

The “fun” activities had also contained “humiliating and intrusive practices regarding privacy”, involving simulated sexual acts, the obligation to share a bed with a colleague during seminars, the use of nicknames to bully people and hanging up deformed and made-up photos in offices, Yahoo and RT reports.

A French court has now in November 2022, ruled in the employee’s favor, that companies can’t fire their workers on bases of not wanting to participate on “After Work” activities, and not wanting to “have fun” in team-building activities that includes “excessive alcoholism” and “promiscuity”. According to the court, Cubik Partners has violated the employee’s “fundamental right to dignity and respect of private life”.

A decision regarding the damages will be made later whether the employee is entitled to a €461,000 payment in damages from Cubik Partners.

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