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A lawsuit filed by one of the former employees of the Czech branch of the multinational tobacco company Philip Morris is being heard at the District Court in Kutná Hora this week.

In principle, this could be an ordinary employment law dispute, but there are circumstances that make the case worthy of wider attention. It affected the reputation of the entire Kutnohora cigarette factory which employs around 800 to 900 people.

The plaintiff is Karel Tichý, who works for the company as an occupational safety and health protection specialist. He was dismissed last June after his post was reportedly dismissed as part of a reorganization.

However, Karel Tichý claimed that the reasons for his officially stated dismissal were representative only, and he wanted to overturn the dismissal.

He presented to the court the version that he was fired on purpose because he repeatedly warned management that the company submitted false data on overtime and work accidents at the factory in its regular monthly reports to Philip Morris International’s headquarters in Switzerland.

Allegedly, only zero was entered in the column related to overtime, although according to Tiché, agency employees work a total of up to 900 hours per month outside of standard working hours.

Tichý, in his role as the company’s occupational safety specialist, is also said to have recorded “at least ten incidents” that he himself assessed as work accidents, but company management classified them as so-called near misses or simply refused to deal with them. with and register them.

At the same time, the prosecution also assessed some of these cases as the result of systematic harassment of people.

The former employee also described the disputed incident. He mentioned, for example, how one of the employees was electrocuted and recommended getting checked out at the hospital immediately.

However, according to Tiché’s prosecutor, his superiors stopped the carriage and the matter was evaluated as an “initial accident”. Although the employee was sent for a medical examination with a delay of several days, according to Tiché, the incident was not reported to Swiss headquarters as a work accident.

As another case, the panel of judges heard of an incident where one of the workers collapsed at work in August 2020 and was taken for treatment. During the investigation, according to the prosecutor, it was discovered that the man had been working up to 240 hours per month for several years. That is, well above the legal limit (work time allowance varies between 152 and 176 hours, depending on the number of days worked in a month).

“By providing false data, it is possible that data on the company’s condition was deliberately manipulated so that it deceived the shareholders of the defendant (Philip Morris Czech Republic),” wrote Karel Tichý in the text of the lawsuit.

The leading Czech company, whose shares are traded on the exchange, has so far left descriptions of events by its former employees without any particular reaction.

“Until there is at least a decision of the court of first instance, we will not comment on it. Then we are ready to comment on this case,” said CR Philip Morris communications manager Klára Jirovcová Pospíšilová only when asked by Seznam Zpráv.

Even lawyer Pavel Bezouška, who represented the tobacco company before the court in Kutná Hora, would not comment. “I do not have the authority to do that,” he responded to Seznam Zpráv’s request for comment on the case.

Tomáš Čech, former head of the “sustainability” department, testified before the Kutnohorsk court this Wednesday as a witness for Tiché. According to Tiché, it is he who ultimately determines how the extraordinary event will be judged, even though he has no expertise in the area.

The witness himself stated that he started at the company 32 years ago as a shopkeeper. In his testimony, he admitted to discussing with his subordinates how to correctly classify several work incidents at the company, but he did not recall major disagreements over injuries.

He only remembers more vividly the case of an injury to a female employee at a company team building event in Harrachov, which in the end was also not registered as a work accident.

For overtime, according to Čech, currently it is listed separately from regular working hours in the monthly report to Switzerland, whereas previously, according to his explanation, it was only included in one summary number.

Tomáš Čech describes the reorganization at the company, which followed with the dismissal of Tiché due to redundancies, as a direct consequence of the change in strategy of the entire tobacco company, when the parent company’s focus on the environment was emphasized. So not as a way to get rid of “uncomfortable” employees. To that end, an entirely new position was immediately created in the department he managed, and a new employee who was an environmental specialist was hired for this.

However, the real result of the reorganization was that the number of people under Čech’s manager remained the same as before the reorganization and Tiché’s sacking.

Plaintiff Karel Tichý, as evidence of his intentional dismissal, stated that after his dismissal, at one point in the entire company with hundreds of employees, there was no one with professional competence in the field of fire protection (only one external employee remained).

For a time, other colleagues from the department provided fire fighting training, even if they did not have the relevant expertise at the time.

Moreover, Tiché’s former colleague in the same position, Aleksandr Kochnev, who took over part of the agenda afterward, confirmed this before the court. But at the same time, this witness added that he had temporarily obtained the relevant certificate and is now upgrading his university qualification in the field of occupational safety with doctoral studies.

Wednesday’s court hearing in the case against the tobacco company was adjourned until March 22, as the court wants to complete the evidence by examining two more witnesses.