Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A sub­sidiary of the Fur­ness Group of Com­pa­nies has been or­dered to pay $80,000 to a chef, who was ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter be­ing ac­cused of leav­ing the door to a freez­er open. 

In­dus­tri­al Court Judges Kath­leen George-Mar­celle, Patrick Ra­bathaly, and Stephanie Fin­gal or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion ear­li­er this month as they up­held a trade dis­pute brought against FEP Ser­vices Lim­it­ed by the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance, and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) on be­half of Chan­delle Pierre. 

“Up­on ma­ture de­lib­er­a­tion, it is held that the work­er Chan­delle Pierre was dis­missed in cir­cum­stances that were harsh and op­pres­sive and not in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and prac­tice,” 

The case re­lat­ed to a de­ci­sion by the com­pa­ny, who pro­vides sup­port ser­vices for the group, to ter­mi­nate Pierre in Feb­ru­ary 2023. 

Pierre joined the com­pa­ny as a chef in Au­gust 2022 and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed her pro­ba­tion pe­ri­od. 

She was on va­ca­tion leave in Jan­u­ary 2023 when she re­ceived a let­ter from the com­pa­ny rep­ri­mand­ing her for leav­ing the freez­er in the pantry of the com­pa­ny’s build­ing open. 

Pierre de­nied any wrong­do­ing as she claimed that she was not al­lowed to ac­cess the freez­er with­out the su­per­vi­sion of se­nior staff mem­bers. 

She al­so con­tend­ed that she had made a com­plaint over the seal for the freez­er door be­ing de­fec­tive and it was not ac­cessed. 

Af­ter she was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, the union filed the case be­fore Pierre al­leg­ing that her ter­mi­na­tion was flawed as she was not warned or sub­ject­ed to a dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing. 

The com­pa­ny re­sist­ed the case as it claimed that its ac­tions were jus­ti­fied. 

It claimed that a se­nior man­ag­er spoke to Pierre af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that the freez­er was left open caus­ing its con­tents in­clud­ing meat to spoil. 

It was claimed that Pierre was warned about the freez­er when she was first hired as the door had been left open by pre­vi­ous em­ploy­ees in the past.

It claimed that when Pierre was in­formed of the in­ci­dent, she was de­fen­sive and rude to the man­ag­er. 

It al­leged that the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate was based on pre­vi­ous warn­ings, Pierre’s re­sponse to be­ing warned about her pur­port­ed omis­sion, and con­cerns over the health and safe­ty of the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tives, who she was as­signed to pre­pare meals for. 

The union was rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Gayle while An­der­son Mod­este rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny.