Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (NALIS) has agreed to re­in­state a work­er af­ter be­ing threat­ened with con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA).

NALIS’s lawyers gave the un­der­tak­ing as the trade union’s con­tempt ap­pli­ca­tion came up for hear­ing be­fore Ap­pel­late Judge Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the PSA, through its lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, sought to hold NALIS ac­count­able for fail­ing to abide by a rul­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court in a trade dis­pute brought on be­half of Ryan Mar­tinez.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar called on NALIS’s lawyer Raphael Ad­jod­ha to ex­plain why the In­dus­tri­al Court’s or­der di­rect­ing Mar­tinez’s re­in­state­ment had not been com­plied with.

Ad­jod­ha said his client had en­coun­tered ad­min­is­tra­tive dif­fi­cul­ties in giv­ing ef­fect to the or­der, as there are cur­rent­ly no va­can­cies in the po­si­tion Mar­tinez pre­vi­ous­ly held.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar sug­gest­ed that this was not a valid ex­cuse for non-com­pli­ance.

The mat­ter was stood down for Ad­jod­ha to con­fer with NALIS cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Brah­ma Be­har­rysingh.

When the case was re­called, NALIS gave an un­der­tak­ing that Mar­tinez would be al­lowed to re­turn to work on Mon­day and would re­ceive his salary for Sep­tem­ber.

The case stems from le­gal ac­tion tak­en by the PSA on Mar­tinez’s be­half af­ter he was ter­mi­nat­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

Mar­tinez joined the pub­lic ser­vice in Oc­to­ber 1997 and was trans­ferred to NALIS in 2002. In 2013, he was pro­mot­ed to Li­brary As­sis­tant II.

In 2017, the PSA filed a trade dis­pute chal­leng­ing Mar­tinez’s dis­missal.

On Ju­ly 27, three In­dus­tri­al Court judges or­dered that Mar­tinez be re­in­stat­ed and di­rect­ed that he be paid the salary and ben­e­fits he would have re­ceived had he not been ter­mi­nat­ed.

The pan­el found that NALIS had failed to prove that Mar­tinez had com­mit­ted acts of gross mis­con­duct and ruled that the be­hav­iour for which he was ter­mi­nat­ed amount­ed to “in­tem­per­ate ex­pres­sions of frus­tra­tion” over an un­re­solved salary is­sue.

The judges al­so found that the dis­ci­pli­nary process used to dis­miss Mar­tinez was pro­ce­du­ral­ly de­fec­tive and that the out­come was dis­pro­por­tion­ate.

NALIS ap­pealed but did not ini­tial­ly ob­tain a stay of the rul­ing from ei­ther the In­dus­tri­al Court or the Court of Ap­peal.

In late Au­gust, PSA lawyer Richard Jag­gasar wrote sev­er­al let­ters to NALIS and its lawyer re­quest­ing that arrange­ments be made for Mar­tinez to re­turn to work.

Mar­tinez re­port­ed­ly re­port­ed for du­ty on Sep­tem­ber 1 but was al­leged­ly stopped from work­ing.

In the con­tempt ap­pli­ca­tion, Jag­gasar sug­gest­ed that NALIS’s for­mer lawyers were to blame for the non-com­pli­ance, claim­ing they had not prop­er­ly in­formed NALIS about what tran­spired dur­ing the le­gal pro­ceed­ings and the out­come.

He ar­gued that there was a con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to give ef­fect to the or­der for each day Mar­tinez was not re­in­stat­ed.

In a par­al­lel ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the ap­peal, Jag­gasar claimed that NALIS had not raised any valid grounds ca­pa­ble of over­turn­ing the In­dus­tri­al Court’s rul­ing. He ar­gued that NALIS was seek­ing to chal­lenge the pan­el’s fac­tu­al find­ings in­stead of rais­ing is­sues of law.

“The In­dus­tri­al Court heard the ev­i­dence of the par­ties’ wit­ness­es, con­sid­ered the doc­u­men­tary ex­hibits, heard the at­tor­neys for both par­ties and de­liv­ered a rea­soned judg­ment iden­ti­fy­ing both sub­stan­tive and pro­ce­dur­al de­fi­cien­cies in the dis­ci­pli­nary process,” Jag­gasar said.

The strik­ing-out ap­pli­ca­tion is sched­uled to be con­sid­ered by the Court of Ap­peal next Wednes­day.

NALIS was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Derek Ali.