The Joy Of Huisvrouw-ery
Sometimes it’s good to be the strictly domestic partner, though I hasten to say it’s by medical necessity rather than choice, which should preserve my feminist credentials a little while longer.
I’m so glad I’m beholden to no-one, not an employer nor any advertisers, and that I can write what I like whenever I like.
Some don’t have that luxury; apparently popular British blogger/expat in Paris La Petite Anglaise has been sacked by her accountant employers:
When the La Petite Anglaise blog began two years ago, it was described by its thirtysomething author as a “whim” offering a wry look at life as a PA and mother of a bilingual toddler in France.
By yesterday, the secretary who wishes to be known only by her first name – Catherine – was fighting to set a legal precedent in France and coping with a media onslaught after she was dismissed by her employers, a firm of Anglo-French accountants, for allegedly bringing them into disrepute with her postings. The single mother and award-winning “blogeuse”, whose online diary gets up to 3,000 hits a day, has never revealed her identity; that of “Mr Frog”, her French former partner and the father of “Tadpole”, her three-year-old daughter; or that of her employers.
But management at Dixon Wilson, which has offices in London and Paris offering a “personal service to wealthy individuals and their businesses”, took a dim view when word of Catherine’s pens?es on love and work became known. On 26 April this year, she was summoned before a senior partner and told she was being suspended pending dismissal for gross misconduct. The grounds for her sacking were eventually downgraded to a lesser offence but she is fighting a claim for compensation, one of the first in France over alleged transgressions relating to a blog.
She does not know how knowledge of her blog, which she kept secret from colleagues, reached her employers. “I’m not sure how it came out,” she said. “I didn’t talk to anyone at work about it. But then one day I noticed from the feedback on the blog that someone had looked at all 200 pages in a single day. I thought it was a bit odd but thought nothing more of it. But shortly afterwards I was called in and told I was being suspended. I was told that what I had written had brought the company into disrepute and given five minutes to clear my desk and leave.”
This is going to be an interesting case. I don’t know what the French legal position is, but when it comes down to it Art. 10 of the ECHR guarantees a limited right to freedom of expression:
ARTICLE 10
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
How that’ll work out in a French tribunal I don’t know. Anyone got any info on French employment law?
Looks like La Petite may have a book deal though. Success is the best revenge. She could also be awarded up to eight months’ pay or ?18,000 in compensation if her employment tribunal case (note to US ‘at will’ employees – employment protections are all part of being a Euroweenie) is successful.
Her former employers also look like putzes, which is always a plus.
