An employee was sexually harassed by another employee and transferred by the employer to another store in the chain. As time passed, for business related reasons, the harasser was also transferred to the store where the harassed employee worked and when the harassed employee refused to work with the harassing employee he was summoned for a hearing. At the hearing, the employee was confronted with general allegations that he had violent outbursts and he agreed to resign and receive the full compensation after realizing that he will still be obligated to work with the employee who harassed him.
The Labor Court ordered compensation in hundreds of thousands of Shekels and held that the duty of good faith of an employer imposes an obligation to provide the employee with the allegations against him and the more serious the allegations are, the more important the details are. Otherwise, we are dealing with an empty proceeding that was done in order to fulfill an obligation and nothing more. Here, the dynamics of the hearing led to the employee being forced to agree to terminate his employment, when he was told that his demand not to work with the harassing employee was rejected. The solution that was found “exempted” the employer from conducting a genuine inquiry with the employee regarding the serious allegations raised at the hearing. At the same time, the employer refrained from acting under the Sexual Harassment Law in order to investigate the employee's complaint that was at the center of his refusal to continue working with the harassing employee in that store. The entire claim of the employee regarding defects in the hearing was accepted and compensation was awarded without proof of damage due to the violation by the employer of the law in connection with the prevention of sexual harassment.