Court blames workplace bullying for woman’s suicide
A Thessaloniki court has attributed the suicide of a 41-year-old mentally disabled employee of a municipally-run enterprise in Oraiokastro to workplace bullying, in a landmark and rare decision.
In a scathing denouncement that was reported by the Voria news website on Friday, a judge at the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance opined that relentless bullying and the toxic environment the woman was subjected to in the workplace led the 41-year-old woman to take her own life with a combination of pills and alcohol.
Describing the conditions under which the deceased worked as “exceptionally difficult and unusual,” the judge ruled that “prolonged and severe conflict” and “prolonged job insecurity” caused a “psychological and nervous breakdown.”
“As a result, lacking the ability to decide rationally, tendencies toward self-destruction emerged, leading to substance abuse, which ultimately resulted in her death,” the ruling read, according to Voria.
The woman was hired at the enterprise in January 2018 as part of a four-year placement program by the state’s employment agency, then OAED, for people with disabilities. She qualified for the program after being diagnosed with a 67% impairment due to a mental disorder.
According to Voria’s report, her boss tried to dismiss her on spurious grounds on more than one occasion, in contravention of the work placement program’s rules; she was then shunned by her superior and her colleagues when she successfully challenged the dismissals in court.
“Her condition was exacerbated by workplace bullying, and this is what the court accepted,” the lawyer representing her family, Spyros Konstantopoulos, told Voria. “They abused an individual with mental health issues.”
The court also ordered the business to pay the 41-year-old’s family compensation for mental anguish.
