More often than not the Maltese (or some of them) are making news abroad for all the wrong reasons. Take the case of the Maltese man who was sued for subjecting one of his female employees to sexual harassment. She told the tribunal who heard her case how after getting soaked in the rain, he spent a day at the office wandering about in his underwear. This Y-front show took place in full view of all the employees who had to put up with this silly flasher wannabe hanging around with a mere few inches of cotton separating their faces from his scrotum while they tried to get on with the business of the day.
This got him dubbed as the “boss in mutande” by an Italian daily which reported the case and how the Industrial Tribunal ruled that the company of which he was director had failed to protect its employees from sexual harassment.
I very much doubt that the man in question thought that his panty parade was simply just a bit of a lark. His pathetic display of exhibitionism is yet another manifestation of incivility and disrespect towards his employees and fellow workers, tinged with a desire to humiliate the woman who eventually filed the lawsuit. People who dismiss his actions as a bit of laddish behaviour or a joke in bad taste are missing the point. Making people feel uncomfortable and causing them to feel even mild distress, is just not on. This should be the norm in every single interaction we have with others, but especially so when it comes to dealing with fellow-employees – these being the people who spend the majority of their working-life cooped up together. There is no need to be an extremist for political correctness, but a modicum of respect would go a long way to making one’s working day and working relationships bearable.
As it is the panty-wearing boss wasn’t the only thing that the employee had to contend with. Her co-workers used to crack sexually-charged and vulgar jokes constantly and when she complained to the management, she was brushed off by a company manager who said that he had other problems to see to. No disciplinary action was taken by the managers who obviously thought that the complainant was making too big a deal of what they considered to be a couple of off-colour jokes. They probably thought that she was making a mountain out of a molehill considering she was not having her breasts fondled or her bottom pinched or being coerced to have sex with the boss.
It’s an attitude which is pervasive throughout Maltese society – one is to consider one’s self as lucky because the situation could be so much worse. Instead of addressing a problem or a complaint, it is dismissed because it’s not a catastrophe. So, if, as in the case at hand, an employee files an internal complaint about sexual harassment, it is ignored because the manager thinks it’s inconsequential, and well it isn’t rape and he has many other important things to see to. No thought was given to minimising friction on the workplace or helping an employee to feel more comfortable. There was no effort to tell the joke-cracking employees to tone it down a notch and perhaps to try to be polite or at least not disrespectful. No – because that would mean being civil, and we don’t do civility in Malta.

The woman who filed the lawsuit citing sexual harassment also claimed that she was a victim of constructive dismissal – that the environment at work was so intolerable that she just couldn’t take it any more and so handed in her notice. The Industrial Tribunal ruled in her favour on both counts and awarded her Lm2,000 by way of compensation.
Some people expressed their surprise at the quantum of the award. Perhaps that’s because sexual harassment suits are a relatively new concept in Malta where sexually-related jokes are considered to be harmless banter and where the boss copping a feel is just one of the minor down-sides of the job on the same level as having to make the tea. In other countries where employers are expected to behave with a measure of decorum and sexual harassment legislation has been around for longer, the awards granted to victims of harassment are considerably higher.
In one particular case which bears a great similarity to the one mentioned above, an employment tribunal held that a chef at an exclusive members’ club in London had sexually harassed a waitress. The chef was said to have walked around the kitchen dressed only in his underpants, and was said to have repeatedly subjected the waitress to crude questions about her sex life. The waitress was awarded GBP124,000 in compensation. One of the important factors taken into account in this case was the bullying and humiliating atmosphere which was evident in the kitchen. Such an atmosphere can, of itself, amount to harassment.
In this case, as in the Maltese one, the employer was penalized for not protecting employees from unwelcome behaviour and allowing the creation an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Although the facts of the two cases were very similar, the amount of compensation awarded differs considerably and the local “boss in mutande” might now be considering himself lucky to have gotten off with a couple of thousand Liri for his panty jape. Indeed he fared very well in comparison. He fared even better than the Italian man who made a habit of employing irregular immigrants and then coercing them to perform oral sex. This went one for some time, until one female employee decided that she had had enough and clamped down on him – literally. The bullying boss was rushed to hospital in agony cradling his bleeding member in his hands. This was a case of a bullied underling taking the law in her own hands – and though it is to be condemned, as all violent acts should – I can’t help feeling that her actions were much more effective than any law could ever be when it comes to penalizing men who can’t keep their lunchbox in their pants and a civil tongue in their heads.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt