Pernod Ricard Korea exec busted for sexual harassment, workplace bullying
By Park Si-soo
Jean Touboul is the chief executive of Pernod Ricard Korea. The company has been ordered to share the penalty for a senior executive's “illegal acts.”
A Korean senior executive at Pernod Ricard Korea was ordered to pay eight former employees 8 million won ($6,800) for sexual harassment and workplace bullying. The Korean unit of the French liquor company was ordered to share the penalty.
Seoul Central District Court made the ruling on Dec. 6, saying the plaintiffs had suffered serious mental pain as a result of the defendant's “illegal” acts that made them “feel humiliated and ashamed.” The court said the company had neglected its duty of supervising its employees properly.
The ruling statement obtained by The Korea Times presents detailed accounts of six cases of sexual harassment and workplace bullying that happened between March 2017 and February 2018.
In one case the executive, during a lunch, threw four or five loaves of meat at employees who spoke out against discriminative payments to temporary and outsourced workers. In another, he forced a subordinate to chew gum he had chewed because he was “in the blues.” Hurling abuse at estranged colleagues was a commonplace.
All the plaintiffs quit the company in March in an early retirement program.
Lawyers representing the executive claimed his innocence, citing written agreements signed by the plaintiffs in which they agreed not to make a legal issue of what happened. But the court did not accept the validity of the agreements.
Pernod Ricard Korea has appealed.
“We acknowledge but disagree with the court decision and we have appealed it,” the company said in a text message sent to The Korea Times. “We have no further comments to make on an ongoing legal procedure.”