Derek Achong

In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix has warned em­ploy­ers against wrong­ful­ly ter­mi­nat­ing work­ers, who fall ill or have fam­i­ly com­mit­ments dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

De­liv­er­ing her an­nu­al ad­dress dur­ing the open­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s 2020/2021 law term yes­ter­day, Thomas-Fe­lix said the court not­ed an in­crease in the fil­ing of in­dus­tri­al re­lat­ed of­fences against em­ploy­ers, who had im­prop­er­ly sought to ter­mi­nate work­ers with­out con­sul­ta­tion since the start of the pan­dem­ic in March.

She said, “The pan­dem­ic ought not be an ex­cuse to flout the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, to flout labour stan­dards, and to flout the laws of the coun­try.”

While she not­ed that ter­mi­na­tion is on­ly per­mit­ted in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, she said there is a law­ful process of re­trench­ment that could be used due to the eco­nom­ic fall­out faced by com­pa­nies as a con­se­quence of Gov­ern­ment’s coro­n­avirus mea­sures.

“Em­ploy­ers are re­mind­ed they must re­spect and ad­here to the rule of law when mak­ing these tough de­ci­sions, which would af­fect the liveli­hoods of work­ers and the sur­vival of their busi­ness­es,” she said, as she called on em­ploy­ers es­pe­cial­ly small­er busi­ness­es with­out a ma­jor­i­ty recog­nised union to still hold de­ci­sions with em­ploy­ees be­fore tak­ing dras­tic de­ci­sions.

While she not­ed that there had been com­plaints by em­ploy­ers and work­ers over de­lays by the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) in terms of pro­cess­ing such re­trench­ment and cor­re­spond­ing sev­er­ance pay­ments, Thomas-Fe­lix said it may be due to an in­crease work­load.

“While I am not de­fend­ing the BIR, these are not nor­mal times, the re­al­i­ty, as I see it, is that there is an on­go­ing ro­ta­tion of pub­lic ser­vants in­clud­ing the staff at the Board of In­land Rev­enue due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” Thomas-Fe­lix said.

Through­out her speech, Thomas-Fe­lix re­peat­ed­ly called on em­ploy­ers and trade unions to en­gage in mean­ing­ful so­cial di­a­logue to help re­solve is­sues in an am­i­ca­ble way and find so­lu­tions in­clud­ing new work­ing arrange­ments.

“We should al­ways bear in mind that there is life af­ter COVID-19 and con­sid­er the im­mense val­ue to be gained if we adopt and ad­here to In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards, par­tic­u­lar­ly so­cial di­a­logue to as­sist, to pro­mote and to main­tain a sys­tem of op­por­tu­ni­ties for all and to ob­tain de­cent, pro­duc­tive work in con­di­tions of free­dom, eq­ui­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and dig­ni­ty in the fu­ture,” Thomas-Fe­lix said.

“The main take away from this cri­sis is that the work­place, and the world of work as we know it, have changed for­ev­er and that em­ploy­ees and trade unions play a key role in as­sist­ing work­ers to nav­i­gate these un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry and in as­sist­ing to sta­bilise the labour mar­ket,” she added.

Dur­ing her speech, Thomas-Fe­lix al­so weighed in on on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, which re­stricts large gath­er­ings. Trade unions were not ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered es­sen­tial busi­ness­es un­der the reg­u­la­tions, which have since been amend­ed to in­clude them.

Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed that while free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion is a fun­da­men­tal right it may be fet­tered dur­ing pe­ri­ods of cri­sis.

“Al­though these re­stric­tions would af­fect large gath­er­ings by unions, it is my re­spect­ful view that they do not amount to an abuse by the State but rather a de­ci­sion by the State to pro­tect cit­i­zens,” she said.

She sug­gest­ed that trade unions should con­tin­ue to find cre­ative means us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to ad­vo­cate for their mem­bers and to en­gage in protest ac­tion, if it is re­quired.

Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed that the court was not im­mune and dur­ing the pan­dem­ic it held 503 re­mote case man­age­ment hear­ings via video con­fer­enc­ing.

While Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed that the ser­vice re­ceived most­ly pos­i­tive re­views, with court users re­quest­ing sim­i­lar hear­ings for open court cas­es and con­cil­i­a­tion, she said that the ex­tend­ed ser­vices were not pos­si­ble due to the court’s con­straints with re­sources.

Re­fer­ring to the court’s sta­tis­tics for the 2019/2020 law term, Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed that there were 905 new fil­ings—505 less than last year.

She at­trib­uted the marked de­crease to the pan­dem­ic as the court was ini­tial­ly closed for three months but not­ed that the tem­po­rary clo­sure as­sist­ed the court in in­creas­ing its dis­po­si­tion rate from 60.9 per­cent in 2018/2019 to 78.1 per­cent dur­ing the last term.