JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Industrial Court to deliver record 45 judgments in 8 days

by

Robert Alonzo
1860 days ago
20200607
President of the Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago, Deborah Thomas-Felix.

President of the Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago, Deborah Thomas-Felix.

GUARDIAN

Ed­i­tor

The In­dus­tri­al Court is set to de­liv­er an un­prece­dent­ed record num­ber of a to­tal of 45 judg­ments over a pe­ri­od of eight days, be­gin­ning this morn­ing.

Of that num­ber, 26 will be de­liv­ered in a four-day pe­ri­od be­tween to­day and Fri­day—ex­cept Thurs­day which is a pub­lic hol­i­day—Cor­pus Christi.

The re­main­ing 19 judg­ments will al­so be de­liv­ered over a four-day pe­ri­od next week as next Fri­day is al­so a pub­lic hol­i­day—Labour Day.

The 45 judg­ments were writ­ten by In­dus­tri­al Court judges who each wrote their re­spec­tive find­ings while work-from-home mea­sures were in place for them dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down pe­ri­od.

Of the 26 judg­ments to be de­liv­ered from to­day—21 per­tains to wrong­ful dis­missal/ter­mi­na­tion of ser­vices

Two oth­ers are to be de­liv­ered for break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions, one in re­la­tion to ma­ter­ni­ty ben­e­fits, one in re­spect to uni­lat­er­al al­ter­ation of job po­si­tion and the oth­er in con­nec­tion with forced re­tire­ment.

Next week, the 19 judg­ments to be de­liv­ered are main­ly for wrong­ful dis­missal/ter­mi­na­tion of ser­vices.

In an in­ter­view, the court’s pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix not­ed that the COVID-19 re­stric­tions did not pre­vent judges and the court’s sup­port­ing staff such as note-tak­ers and tran­scrip­tion­ists from com­plet­ing the task.

She not­ed that this was done de­spite the se­vere short­age of note-tak­ers and tran­scrip­tion­ists at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Thomas-Fe­lix said al­though there were no sit­tings, these sup­port­ing staff mem­bers worked around the clock, al­so un­der the work-from-home en­vi­ron­ment, to en­sure judges were pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary pa­per­work to write their re­spec­tive judg­ments.

She said as the sup­port­ing staff com­plet­ed the pa­per­work, each judge be­gan writ­ing their judg­ment.

She al­so com­mend­ed the staff and judges for go­ing the ex­tra mile with­in a two-week time span to com­plete the 45 judg­ments.

In a let­ter sent to stake­hold­ers. Thomas-Fe­lix said every­one was look­ing for the re­sump­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Court from to­day.

The let­ter said, “While many things have changed and will con­tin­ue to change go­ing for­ward, one thing which re­mains con­stant is our com­mit­ment to your safe­ty when you vis­it our build­ings. Health and Safe­ty and in­fec­tion con­trol will con­tin­ue to be a top pri­or­i­ty for us at the court.”

She said some new mea­sures will be im­ple­ment­ed.

She not­ed that all fil­ings, open court hear­ings, case man­age­ment and con­cil­i­a­tion hear­ings will con­tin­ue to be con­duct­ed in a safe and com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment.

“To this end, you will be re­quired to wear a mask to en­ter the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do build­ings. Up­on en­try, the court’s per­son­nel will con­duct tem­per­a­ture tests, please note, that the In­dus­tri­al Court re­serves the right to de­ny en­try to per­sons who ex­hib­it flu-like symp­toms, such as el­e­vat­ed tem­per­a­tures.”

In her let­ter, she said peo­ple will be re­quired to use the hand sani­tis­ers pro­vid­ed when they en­ter the build­ings.

The wit­ness rooms have been re-paint­ed and re-out­fit­ted.

Those at­tend­ing the courts have been ad­vised that there will no longer be mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, etc. in these rooms since these items are dif­fi­cult to dis­in­fect.

The court will be in­tro­duc­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines and pro­to­cols.

She has al­so urged stake­hold­ers to re­strict the num­ber of at­ten­dees to court hear­ings to on­ly the par­ties di­rect­ly in­volved in these hear­ings.

Wit­ness­es are re­quired to re­main in a wit­ness room un­til they are re­quest­ed to give ev­i­dence.

She said since March, 16, the court’s se­cu­ri­ty has sole con­trol of the en­trances and the ex­its of the court build­ings.

As a re­sult, the court’s se­cu­ri­ty will open and close all the doors to the en­trances and the ex­its to pre­vent the staff and the pub­lic from hav­ing any con­tact with door knobs or door han­dles.

On March 17, drop box­es were placed at the court’s en­trances.

These drop box­es are to be used by all lit­i­gants to sub­mit ev­i­dence and ar­gu­ments, wit­ness state­ments, cor­re­spon­dence and oth­er doc­u­ments.

Doc­u­ments from the drop box­es are col­lect­ed and processed and par­ties can col­lect their stamped copies ap­prox­i­mate­ly half- an- hour af­ter the time of the ini­tial de­posit in the drop box­es.

She made it clear that fil­ing of cas­es will no longer be per­mit­ted at the counter of the reg­istry.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored