Judgment No. 1644
Decision
The complaint is dismissed.
Considerations 9 and 11-12
Extract:
The UPAEP recruited the complainant in 1969. She was seconded to the STES at the International Bureau from 1 June 1974 to 18 December 1976 and from 16 December 1989 to 31 December 1992 and while there was covered by the UPU Staff Rules and Regulations. But, being a member of the UPAEP's translation service in Montevideo, she had the status of a staff member of its General Secretariat, and it is not an international organisation that has recognised the Tribunal's jurisdiction.
[...]
Several judgments do affirm the Tribunal's competence to entertain complaints from staff members of the UPU's translation services. Judgment 122 [...] ruled that the Tribunal was competent to entertain a complaint from a translator appointed by the UPU to the English Translation Service on a six-month contract that was twice renewed. The Tribunal held that, the Director-General of the Union having accepted its jurisdiction, this acceptance was also binding as regards the language groups since it was a service within the framework of the UPU. But that ruling does not apply here. Translation into English was done by a permanent central service of the International Bureau and by analogy its staff had the same status as the employees of the Union. Likewise, Judgments 868 [...], 1013 [...] and 1043 [...] were about cases in which a translator from the Arab Language Group was challenging dismissal. The Tribunal said that the language groups "lack legal personality of their own" and that the UPU's recognition of its jurisdiction held good "for the Arab and other language groups of the Union as well" and that it was competent because the complainant was a staff member of the UPU and was guaranteed the same status as the employees of the International Bureau. This case is quite different. The complainant is a staff member not of the UPU but of the UPAEP. She had the status of a staff member of the International Bureau only while on secondment to Bern. The case law she cites is irrelevant to a dispute with an international organisation that has not recognised the Tribunal's jurisdiction.
So she cannot succeed in her plea -- which she may plead before a domestic court -- that refusal to entertain her case would be denial of due process and contrary to general principles, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the American Convention on Human Rights of 22 November 1969. However valid the principle she cites -- that an employee of an international organisation is entitled to the safeguard of an impartial ruling by an international tribunal on any dispute with the employer -- the Tribunal cannot but declare that it is not competent.
Keywords
competence; ratione personae
|
