|
Judgment No. 29
Complaint No. 42 Paul J. Chrétien v. Secretary General of the Organization of American States
THE ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNAL OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES, Composed of Juan Bautista Climent Beltrán, President; Alejandro Tinoco, Vice President; and Carlos A. Pigretti, Judge, Has before it for judgment the proceedings on the complaint filed by Paul J. Chrétien against the Secretary General of the Organization of American States. The Complainant was represented by Juan F. Bauta, attorney, and the Secretary General by José Antonio Tijerino, attorney and legal adviser of the Department of Legal Affairs of the General Secretariat, all in conformity with Article 20 of the Rules of Procedure of the Tribunal. WHEREAS: I. On October 21, 1976, Paul J. Chrétien filed a complaint against the Secretary General, as authorized by the Statute of the Tribunal. After complying with the requirements as to his personal and official status, the Complainant went on to explain the facts that had given rise to his complaint, and in this regard stated: That by this pleading, he is lodging the complaint he is entitled to make against the Secretary General because of noncompliance with the conditions set forth in his appointment, which were violated when his services were terminated without compliance with the General Standards and the Staff Rules. That on April 30, 1976, the Director of Personnel wrote to inform him that his position was among those that had been eliminated from the budget for the next biennium. On June 28, 1976, the Director of Personnel informed him that his services with the General Secretariat would be terminated on August 31, 1976. That on August 31, 1976, his services were terminated without prior compliance with articles 17(b) and 38 of the General Standards and Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6. In the staff reduction resulting from the deletion of existing posts from the new program-budget that took effect on July 1, 1976, the General Secretariat, and specifically the Office of Personnel, acted capriciously and illegally to determine which affected staff members would continue in their posts and which would be terminated, and to carry out these capricious and illegal decisions, it then manifestly violated the applicable legal provisions in filling both vacant and newly created posts. That the action of the General Secretariat in filling vacant or new posts without complying with the applicable legal provisions prevented him from applying and competing for some of these positions in which he was interested and for which he considered himself qualified. He was thus injured by having the doors closed to the possibility of his continuing to work for the General Secretariat without interruption. That while he admits the legitimacy of the decision to abolish the posts of General Secretariat staff, he maintains at the same time that articles 17(b) and 38 of the General Standards and Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6 as they stood before the enactment of resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76) of the General Assembly, which suspended the former, and of the Executive Order of the Secretary General No. 76-2, dated June 30, 1976, which suspended the application of portions of the latter, are applicable in his case. That the suspensions by the General Assembly of articles 17(b) and 38 are actually unilateral changes in his employment contract that affect the balance of the contractual obligations and are thus not valid without his consent. That the rights he enjoys by virtue of articles 17 and 38 of the General Standards and the related Staff Rules are acquired rights that cannot be taken away from him by an act of the General Assembly or of any other body or authority of the inter-American system. The thesis that the contractual stipulations, whether explicit or incorporated by reference, of the service contracts of staff members of international organizations are acquired rights has been upheld by administrative tribunals since at least February 26, 1946, when the Administrative Tribunal of the League of Nations issued its judgments Nos. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34, all of which recognized it. That the same thesis has been upheld more recently (judgments rendered in 1953 by the Administrative Tribunal of the United Nations Nos. 19, Kaplan; 20, Middleton; 21, Rubin; and others) and was sustained most explicitly in Judgment No. 61 of the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labor Organization (ILO), on September 4, 1962. That the "suspensions" of the application of Article 17(b) of the General Standards and of Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6 may not be taken into account in the case of his termination, since that would amount to a retroactive application of resolution 249 (VI-O/76) and of Executive Order No. 76-2. That the process of abolishing the Complainant's post began when the Secretary General, in March 1976, presented the proposed program-budget of the Organization for 1976-78, in which the position was not included. Or else, at worst, it began on April 30, 1976, the day on which the Director of Personnel officially notified him that his post was among the permanent positions that had been eliminated from the new program-budget. Both these dates of course precede the adoption by the General Assembly of its resolution 249 (VI-O/76) on June 18, 1976, and the issue of Executive Order No. 76-2 by the Secretary General on June 30, 1976. That the General Assembly approved the program-budget, which did not include his post, at the same meeting during which it adopted resolution 249 (VI-O/76) (the fifth plenary session, held on June 18), and resolution 249 (VI-O/76) therefore could not be applied other than retroactively. That the Administration's position on the procedure followed in carrying out the reduction in force is that articles 17(b) and 38 of the General Standards and Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6 do not have to be observed because they have been "suspended" by, respectively, the General Assembly and the Secretary General. If this were the case --which he will accept merely as a hypothesis-- it is obvious that all the staff members holding positions eliminated from the program-budget as of July 1, 1976, would have had to be dismissed when the notification period provided for in the Staff Rules expired, because both the preference in filling vacant posts and the right to displace other staff members with less seniority would have disappeared. Staff members whose posts were not included in the new program-budget would have no legal grounds for requesting placement in or transfer to vacant posts without the competition called for by Article 17(a) of the General Standards; nor could they ask to be appointed to vacant posts without passing through one or more selection committees, as Article 17(a) also provides. That, nevertheless, the Office of Personnel engaged in the inconsistency of asserting that Article 17(b) of the General Standards and Staff Rule 110.6 were not applicable while at the same time it applied the principles of those provisions by protecting certain permanent staff members affected by the reduction in force, whom it installed in new or vacant positions that legally could only be filled by competition with the advice of one or more selection committees. That a transfer from an abolished post to a vacant post without the announcement of a competition would not be possible in the conceptual framework of the recently enacted suspensions of the General Standards and the Staff Rules, because Staff Rule 105.2(d) had also been suspended by Executive Order No. 76-2 and could not be applied. That, unfortunately, he is unable to provide the Tribunal with complete information on the fate of all the staff members whose posts were included in the 1974-76 program-budget but excluded from the 1976-78 program-budget. However, he can state that (a) not all the people whose posts were abolished received letters from the Director of Personnel informing them that their services would be terminated, and those who did not receive such letters have continued to work in the General Secretariat; (b) several persons who did receive such letters have, nevertheless, continued to work either in other jobs or in the same posts that they had previously been told had been abolished; and (c) those who have continued to work by being placed in vacant or newly created posts did not take part in any competition and were not assigned to their new posts on the advice of one or more selection committees. That it appears from all this that in the process of reducing its staff the General Secretariat did not apply Article 17(b) or Article 38 of the General Standards or Staff Rules 110.4 or 110.6, nor did it act on the principle that those regulations could not be applied; rather, it applied them in certain arbitrarily chosen cases, placing those affected in vacant or newly created posts. In so doing, the General Secretariat ignored the whole system that is supposed to govern staff reduction, including the one that the Secretariat itself contends is applicable--that is, the nonobservance of articles 17 and 38 of the General Standards and Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6. The result was that the fate of those affected was left entirely to the whim of the administration. That by virtue of the foregoing, he prays the Tribunal: That it take testimony from the following witnesses: E. Patrick Healy, Director of Personnel, and James Schlotfeldt, Deputy Director of Personnel. That oral proceedings be held. That it nullify the termination of his services by the General Secretariat because this measure was adopted in violation of his employment contract and of the applicable provisions of the General Standards and the Staff Rules and, moreover, because during the reductions in force he was discriminated against by being terminated when his post was abolished while at the same time other staff members whose posts had also been abolished were enabled to work. That the obligation he seeks to have met is that in the reduction in force occasioned by the deletion from the 1976-78 program-budget of some posts included in the previous program-budget, the General Secretariat act in conformity with the terms of his employment contract and with the applicable legal provisions. That for this purpose the Tribunal nullify the termination of his services and order him reinstated in the service of the General Secretariat. That the General Secretariat pay him the salary and other benefits he ought to have been receiving from September 1, 1976, until such time as he begins to work again. That the judgment rendered by the Tribunal might add that the Secretary General could still terminate him because of the abolition of his post but must do so, if at all, in conformity with articles 17(b) and 38 of the General Standards and Staff Rules 110.4 and 110.6, and in any case without discriminating against him as the General Secretariat did in deciding to continue the services of other staff members whose posts were also eliminated from the 1976-78 program-budget. That for the purposes of Article VII.2 of the Statute of the Tribunal, the amount of the indemnity be set at the equivalent of three years of the basic salary of a grade D-1, step 7, to which he was entitled on August 31, 1976, the date on which he stopped working. II. On December 6, 1976, the attorney for the Secretary General presented his answer to the complaint filed by Mr. Chrétien. After presenting his credentials as representative of the Secretary General, pursuant to Article 22.1 of the Rules of Procedure of the Tribunal, he stated: That to summarize the Complainant's allegations, it might be said that the nub of the question is that in his opinion the "bumping right" referred to in the General Standards and the Staff Rules constitutes an acquired right and that therefore resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76) and Executive Order No. 76-2 of the Secretary General cannot be applied retroactively. That the Complainant is clearly in error in describing bumping as an acquired right; there are fundamental differences between acquired rights and mere expectant rights, or simply expectancies. In fact, there would be no argument if the resolutions referred, for example, to benefits or rights provided for in the Retirement and Pension Plan or to vacations, awards of merit, and so forth. These are acquired rights, because their acquisition has been completed over time and because a person who has them may not be deprived of them, since they have come to be part of his "estate." On the other hand, the bumping right is a typical example of an expectant right, or, as Planiol says, it is a right as yet unborn, a hope or expectation that may vanish. That Professor Mario de la Cueva, who refers extensively to the issue in his Derecho Mexicano del Trabajo, and Federico Puig Peña, who examines the problem of the retroactivity of laws in his book Compendio de Derecho Civil Español, both express similar views. Professor de la Cueva comments in the work cited (Vol. I, pp. 406 et seq.) on a case very similar to the present one, which was adjudicated by the Labor Tribunal of the Supreme Court of Mexico. Before this case arose, the Legislature of the State of Veracruz had passed a law requiring that after a particular date a certain percentage of the workers in the private sector in that state would have to be Mexican citizens. When this law was implemented, a number of aliens were displaced, and they claimed that they had been unilaterally and retroactively deprived of their acquired rights. That the Tribunal correctly rejected the petitioners' arguments, stating in its opinion that the alien workers had not been deprived of vested rights, but rather of certain expectations that had not been used and could not have been asserted until certain necessary preconditions existed. Long before these conditions came into existence, however, the Legislature of Veracruz extinguished the expectant rights. Furthermore, the action of the Legislature in that instance was a reasonable one for such a body to take. The intent was not to injure foreign workers in Veracruz, but to ameliorate the unemployment problems of Mexican citizens in that state. That it can be seen from the legal writings and jurisprudence cited that bumping rights, as provided for in the Staff Rules of the General Secretariat, recognized the right to enjoy a benefit at the time the occasion presented itself, that is, when the expectation took on concrete form in a displacement favoring the holder of that right. Further to this, it should be observed that bumping as conceived in the Staff Rules did not constitute a right to displace a third party automatically but rather was a right that benefited the holder only when certain conditions and circumstances occurred. That there is an interesting point to be noted as to the timing of the adoption by the General Assembly of these two resolutions: AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76), which suspended bumping rights, and AG/RES. 258 (VI-O/76), which approved the program-budget of the Organization and reduced posts such as the one held by the Complainant. The suspension of the expectant right of bumping was approved first, and then the elimination of the posts. This occurred in the same plenary session, but the order in which these resolutions were adopted proves the priority in time of AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76). That, furthermore, as Ruggiero points out, in interpreting a regulation as to its retroactivity the intentions and aims of the legislator must be considered. De Buen says that "whether or not to grant retroactive force to laws in specific cases is a question that must, in the last analysis, be left up to the political judgment of good leadership." In the present case, it is clear that in suspending bumping rights the General Assembly wished to give retroactive force to resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76), since its purpose was to ensure that an immediate solution to the problems created by the elimination of numerous posts from the new 1976-78 program-budget would be administratively feasible. That it is therefore clear that the General Assembly's intent could only have been to make resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76) retroactive, since it was hoped to overcome the administrative upheavals that would ensue from the reduction in force. Had the intent been otherwise, it would have been explicitly stated, as was done with the amendment of Article 16, on the so-called positions of trust. In this latter case, unlike that of Article 17(b), the General Assembly endorsed the report of the rapporteur of the Fourth Committee, on Administrative and Budgetary Matters, which expressly provided that the resolution would not be applied retroactively; that is, when the General Assembly suspended Article 17(b) it did so without any pronouncement from the Fourth Committee. That, lastly, it should be stressed that, even supposing that resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76) is not applicable retroactively as in the case of acquired rights not open to dispute such as vacations, bumping is an expectant right that ends automatically whenever the right that gives it legal support is annulled, eliminated, or suspended, regardless of whether the new law is to be applied retroactively or not. That the judgments of the Administrative Tribunals of the League of Nations and of the United Nations --which the Complainant fails to append-- make reference to classic "acquired rights" that are not open to dispute. The Complainant is most careful not to mention that these judgments were rendered in cases concerning international organizations whose staff rules did not, either then or now, contemplate or recognize bumping, which is the only right under consideration in this case. As to the document he does append, the complete text of Judgment No. 61, which is the one he deems "most explicit," it requires special comment. The General Secretariat of the OAS also considered it an interesting judgment, as can be seen from its having been studied by the Department of Legal Affairs in document CP/CRP-174/73 corr. 1 of 18 July 1973, "Analysis of the Concept of Acquired Rights as Applied to Participants in the Retirement and Pension Plan of the General Secretariat." The memorandum contained in that document offers valid arguments for the interpretation given at that time to the limited parity with the United Nations staff approved by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States for its own staff, in particular to an increase in contributions to the Retirement and Pension Fund and to the use of the United Nations formula for computing the minimum pension. That as regards the alleged discrimination in the relocation of other staff members whose posts were also eliminated, stress should be laid on the good faith shown by the General Secretariat and the efforts made by the Office of Personnel to keep the actual number of terminations as small as possible. The General Secretariat did not act in a contradictory or discriminatory fashion. It did not allow the exercise of bumping rights because they had been suspended by the General Assembly. The Office of Personnel assisted the great majority of the staff affected, as it had promised to do in letters to them on April 30 and June 28, 1976, by its interpretation and application of Staff Rule 105.2(d), which speaks of a person's being "offered another post"--without specifying that this post must be vacant or whether it may be a newly created one--"in the same grade and at the same salary," pursuant to Staff Rule 110.6(d). That the Complainant has been familiar with transfers made without any previous competition such as he is now demanding for himself. It should be recalled that on March 1, 1969, the Complainant was promoted from a P-4 (then called I-4) post in the Department of Economic Affairs to become Director of the Office of Personnel, with the grade of PO, step 1 (i.e., D-1). No vacancy announcement was issued. The Secretary General of his own volition named him to that post, which he accepted. Subsequently, when he was removed from that position, he was again transferred laterally, to another post in the Department of Economic Affairs at the P-5 level, but retaining his D-1 grade as incumbent. Once again, he accepted. There was no competition or Vacancy Announcement in this instance either, as the Staff Rules already required. All this goes to prove that if indeed the Secretary General has at any time shown discrimination toward the Complainant, it was openly in his favor. The Secretary General, acting in the spirit of Article 37 of the General Standards to Govern the Operations of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, has at no time discriminated against Mr. Chrétien. That the Complainant mentions his interest in a P-4 position as legal adviser in the Office of Personnel. Mr. Chrétien entered the Organization 19 years ago as an economist, not as a lawyer, and over those 19 years he performed various functions in the General Secretariat, but never in legal affairs. His record shows no evidence of his having practiced law in Haiti, in either the public or the private sector, since his graduation in 1944. In these circumstances, the General Secretariat could hardly consider employing him to advise the Office of Personnel as its lawyer. The General Secretariat attempted to relocate the Complainant in other offices, but without success, and for this reason decided to terminate his services. That, lastly, he wishes to call the Tribunal's attention to the curious situation of the Complainant, who on separating from the Organization received US$143,807.71. He expressed no reservation or protest on receiving this money, a large part of which is recognized as indemnity for his leaving the service. It might therefore have been supposed that he would make no further claims, yet he has now brought this complaint to the Administrative Tribunal. As a result, he begins to enjoy the US$143,807.71 received as a lump sum and he appears before the Tribunal, without putting up any security and without risking a single cent, to ask for possible additional benefits. That he therefore prays the Tribunal: a. To dismiss the complaint filed by Paul J. Chrétien, that is, to uphold the Secretary General's decision whereby the Complainant's services with the General Secretariat were terminated as of September 1, 1976, and consequently to rule that he is not entitled to remain in the service of the General Secretariat or to receive salary or other benefits for any period subsequent to August 31, 1976. b. To dismiss also the Complainant's petition that for the purposes of Article VII.2 of the Statute of the Tribunal, the amount of the indemnity be set at the equivalent of three years of basic salary at the D-1, step 7, level. c. To assess costs against the Complainant. III. On December 13, 1976, the Complainant presented his reply to the Secretary General's answer, and in this regard stated: That the tactic of confusing the Tribunal is quite plain in the answer, which attempts to bring together under one heading two of the grounds on which his appeal rests. These two grounds, separate and distinct, are as follows:
That he will say nothing more about the reply of the Secretary General, because he wishes the appeal he has brought to the Tribunal in the present case to be limited to a pronouncement by the Tribunal on the three specific grounds on which he is asking that the termination of his services with the General Secretariat be nullified:
That he therefore, having presented this brief and its copies, prays the Administrative Tribunal to hold that the procedure of reply to the answer has been completed and that any and all of the petitions contained in the complaint brief have been reproduced. IV. On January 12, 1977, the attorney for the Secretary General presented his response to the reply of the Complainant, stating: That the Complainant offers no valid refutation of any of the points made by the Secretary General in his answer to the complaint. For this reason, he will only comment briefly on a few of the points raised, and will try not to repeat ideas contained in his formal argument, each and every part of which he reaffirms. That the three main observations made by the Complainant are closely interrelated and refer to (a) the appointment of a legal adviser to the Office of Personnel and (b) the discrimination to which he feels he has been subjected as a result of not having been relocated in the General Secretariat when his post was eliminated by the General Assembly in June 1976. That, in the first place, the General Secretariat, contrary to the Complainant's assertion, had no intention of discussing in this complaint the appointment of Martha Braga to the post of legal adviser to the Office of Personnel. It was the Complainant who introduced this subject into the case, making erroneous statements, possibly because he knew that his request for reconsideration on this particular matter was filed out of time, as the Reconsideration Committee unanimously declared. That he limits himself to rejecting the Complainant's statements on this question, and to showing that Mrs. Braga was appointed in accordance with the rules as part of the process of regularization of contract personnel carried out in fulfillment of the instructions given by the General Assembly last June. He has also shown that the Complainant could not, in any event, have hoped for this appointment, since he has never practiced law, either in the private or public sector of his own country or in any international agency, much less during his 19 years of service with the General Secretariat. Since this statement has not been refuted, it still holds good. That as regards the alleged discrimination against the Complainant, it has been demonstrated that, on the contrary, he was given preferential treatment on other occasions, as, for example, on March 1, 1969, when he was appointed Director of the Office of Personnel. That it is also incomprehensible that the Complainant feigns ignorance of the reasons why his superiors transferred him to a lesser post without any protest on his part. It would be therefore naive to suppose that the Complainant accepted this transfer without knowing the reasons --probably serious reasons-- that forced the administration to correct a mistaken decision. But there is something more: that same administration proposed to abolish the post to which the Complainant had been transferred, in a decision that was communicated to the Complainant by the Director of Personnel on March 12, 1973, to take effect on June 13 of that year. That these facts have been stated merely to indicate to the Tribunal that even the previous administration, which had given tangible proof of obvious partiality towards the Complainant, had for more than three years, ever since 1973, considered it necessary to abolish his post; the present administration has shared this view, and thus has not acted hastily or in a discriminatory fashion. That the Complainant again insists that "bumping" is an acquired right, and that therefore the decisions of the General Assembly (AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76)) and of the Secretary General (Executive Order No. 76-2) cannot be applied to him retroactively. It is significant that in his comments, the Complainant does not attempt to comment on, much less to refute, the doctrine on which the General Secretariat based its case, such as the opinions of authors like Cabanellas, Puig Peña, De Buen, and Ruggiero, or the international jurisprudence on the matter, particularly the ruling of the Supreme Court of Mexico, all of which are extensively documented in the answer to the complaint. That, lastly, he would like to mention that the Complainant has been careful not to contradict the Respondent's statement that when he received US$143,807.71, a large part of which was termination indemnity, he did not reserve his right subsequently to appear before the Tribunal, and that it must therefore be considered that he has no subsequent claim against the General Secretariat. That he therefore prays the Tribunal: That it deem the procedure of response to Mr. Chrétien's reply of December 13, 1976, to have been completed. That it deem each and every one of the allegations, statements, refutations, and petitions contained in his answer of December 6, 1976, to have been reaffirmed at this time. V. On March 25, 1977, pursuant to Article 14.2 of the Rules of Procedure of the Tribunal, the present case was placed on the list of matters pending consideration. Once the President had set the opening date for the session corresponding to the second quarter of the current year, the pertinent steps were taken and the Tribunal was composed of Juan Bautista Climent Beltrán, President; Alejandro Tinoco, Vice President; and Carlos A. Pigretti, Judge. It met as scheduled, deliberated on the case sub judice, and decided, in accordance with Articles 17 and 18.3 of the Rules of Procedure, to admit the evidence it deemed pertinent and to take the testimony accepted and hold the oral proceedings requested by the parties on May 23, 1977, at 10:30 a.m. The testimony was taken and the oral proceedings were held on the day and at the time indicated, as the record shows. The Tribunal then decided that further evidence was not necessary and, in accordance with Article 27 of the Rules of Procedure, designated one of its members to draft the judgment. Having examined the proceedings, the Tribunal now CONSIDERS: 1. That it is competent to hear this complaint, pursuant to Article II of its Statute. 2. The parties have laid marked emphasis on questions of acquired rights and the retroactive application of resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76) of the General Assembly and Executive Order No. 76-2 of the Secretary General, dated June 30, 1976. The Tribunal has already ruled in on this regard, in complaints Nos. 43 to 48 filed by Frank Hebblethwaite et al., which were decided in Judgment No. 30 of this session, but, for reasons to be given below, these questions are not specifically relevant to the present case. 3. The General Secretariat, in full exercise of the powers granted it in the Charter of the Organization of American States and in articles 11 and 12 of the General Standards, began a structural reorganization of the economic and social area at the end of 1975. The General Secretariat's decision not to include the Complainant's post in the proposed budget for the 1976-78 biennium was reported in a letter dated April 30, 1976, from the Director of Personnel to Mr. Chrétien. Thus, even though the proposed program-budget requires the approval of the General Assembly if it is to go into effect, it must be concluded that the resulting abolition of the Complainant's post is a direct consequence of the reorganization carried out by the General Secretariat. The Complainant, in the understanding that the abolition of his post might not necessarily mean a reduction in force, requested that if there really was a reduction in force the General Secretariat put into effect the procedure established in Staff Rule 110.6, and specifically that it form the advisory committee referred to on paragraph (k) of the Rule. The foregoing is clear from the notes the Complainant sent to the General Secretariat on May 4 and July 14, 1976. 4. The General Secretariat, aware of the problems that could arise out of the reorganization of certain offices, took various steps to relocate the staff affected. Although it was successful in some cases, its efforts failed insofar as the Complainant was concerned, as has been shown in the testimony of Messrs. Healy and Schlotfeldt, and in the other records. It is true that when the Secretary General restructures an office he is empowered to retain or reduce particular activities, but if the reduction results in the abolition of a post held by a member of the international career service, he must necessarily carry out his decision in conformity with the procedures established in the regulations that are in effect at the time of the reorganization. There is therefore no doubt that the restructuring occurred well before June 18, 1976, the date on which the General Assembly adopted resolution AG/RES. 249 (VI-O/76). 5. In the reorganization, the General Secretariat eliminated the Complainant's functions as unnecessary and therefore did not include the position in the 1976-78 program-budget. Despite his requests, it did not put in motion the procedures established in Staff Rule 110.6 for such cases. For this reason, the Tribunal holds that the injury suffered by the Complainant as a result of the General Secretariat's failure to act should be cause for redress, since it has to do with fundamental principles concerning the substantive rights of members of the international career service. On the other hand, the Tribunal holds that the proper application of these principles cannot alter or diminish the full powers vested in the General Secretariat to ensure that that service is a fit instrument for carrying out the purposes and objectives of the OAS. By virtue of the foregoing, and pursuant to Article VII.1 and 2 of the Statute, the Tribunal unanimously RESOLVES: 1. To rule that the Secretary General must reinstate Paul J. Chrétien in the service of the Organization at the grade he had when his employment was terminated, and pay him the salary and emoluments he should have received from the date of his termination until the date of his actual reinstatement. 2. In the event that the Secretary General exercises his option under Article VII.2 of the Statute of the Tribunal, to set at US$12,000 the amount the General Secretariat must pay the Complainant as indemnity, without prejudice to any benefits deriving from his contractual relationship that may be due him in accordance with the regulations in force. 3. To set at US$1,000 the amount that the Organization of American States must pay the Complainant for attorney's fees.
Let notification be given. Washington, D.C., June 1, 1977
Juan Bautista Climent Beltrán, Esq. / President Alejandro Tinoco, Esq. / Vice President Carlos A. Pigretti, Esq. / Judge Domingo E. Acevedo, Esq. / Secretary OEA/Ser.R TRIBAD/93 1 June 1977 Original: Spanish |
