Derek Achong

The In­dus­tri­al Court has dis­missed a com­plaint from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) over on­go­ing plans to re­struc­ture the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA). 

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Tues­day, In­dus­tri­al Court Judges Lawrence Achong, An­drew Stroude and Vin­cent Cabr­era re­ject­ed the PSA’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence (IRO) large­ly based on the grounds used by their col­leagues to dis­miss an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion over the is­sue in March. 

“The above find­ings go to the crux of this mat­ter and are al­so dis­pos­i­tive of the present IRO,” the three judges said. 

In the pre­vi­ous de­ci­sion, an­oth­er pan­el of the court ruled that the lit­i­ga­tion was pre­ma­ture as the re­struc­tur­ing plan was still be­ing for­mu­lat­ed. 

It al­so ruled col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process, which the union claimed was be­ing scut­tled, would on­ly be­gin af­ter the plan is fi­nalised and com­mu­ni­cat­ed. 

Al­though the PSA sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to ap­peal the de­ci­sion of the in­junc­tion based on per­ceived “er­rors in sub­stan­tive and pro­ce­dur­al law and er­rors in fact”, such was not even­tu­al­ly pur­sued.

“This is by no means a triv­ial mat­ter, the is­sue of re­struc­tur­ing as ac­knowl­edged by both par­ties re­quires col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing but as out­lined in Ap­pli­ca­tion 14 of 2021 that point is moot when poli­cies have not yet been de­fined by the Au­thor­i­ty,” the new pan­el said. 

“We, there­fore, find on the pre­lim­i­nary point that fur­ther pro­ceed­ings are un­nec­es­sary in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” they added. 

The pan­el al­so point­ed out that the union’s com­plaints over WASA’s al­leged breach­es of a Mem­o­ran­da of Agree­ment be­tween the par­ties, which is the sub­ject of the IRO, are cur­rent­ly un­der ju­di­cial con­sid­er­a­tion in two sep­a­rate cas­es be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court and one be­fore the High Court. 

In a press re­lease an­nounc­ing the court’s de­ci­sion, the au­thor­i­ty said it was pleased by the out­come as it main­tained that it was nev­er in­volved in any wrong­do­ing. 

“WASA is grate­ful to have re­ceived the court’s guid­ance and now that all le­gal hur­dles have been cleared in re­la­tion to the re­struc­tur­ing, the Au­thor­i­ty re­it­er­ates its con­sis­tent pub­licly stat­ed po­si­tion that it in­tends to and will al­ways com­ply with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice through­out the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the re­struc­tur­ing process, in­clud­ing con­sult­ing with the Recog­nised Ma­jor­i­ty Unions in good faith,” it said. 

In Ju­ly, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced that the Cab­i­net had ap­proved the au­thor­i­ty’s plan to re­struc­ture the State-owned util­i­ty. 

While Gon­za­les did not go in­to much specifics about the plan, which was be­ing for­mu­lat­ed by the au­thor­i­ty’s board, he did re­veal it may in­clude re­trench­ing 50 per­cent of its cur­rent 426-mem­ber man­age­ment team. 

He said WASA will take on a new struc­ture that will see five ser­vice ar­eas with five man­agers who will di­rect­ly re­port to the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer.

He said the lev­el of man­age­ment must be re­duced to en­sure WASA runs more ef­fi­cient­ly and is not caught up in too much red tape.

Gon­za­les al­so sug­gest­ed that the plan would seek to re­duce the com­pa­ny’s op­er­at­ing bud­get and dras­ti­cal­ly in­crease rev­enue col­lec­tion. 

The PSA’s le­gal team was led by Lord John Hendy, KC, while At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour led WASA’s le­gal team be­fore tak­ing up his Cab­i­net ap­point­ment. 

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, and Ker­wyn Gar­cia.