Derek Achong

The Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB) has won its ap­peal against a law­suit over its de­ci­sion to de­ny a for­mer bank work­er ac­cess to the In­dus­tri­al Court be­cause his trade union did not have a bank ac­count.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment at the end of a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Wednes­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Mal­colm Holdip and Vasheist Kokaram ruled that High Court Judge Joan Charles got it wrong when she up­held the law­suit brought by Sanc­tu­ary Work­ers’ Trade Union and for­mer RBC Roy­al Bank em­ploy­ee Mi­toon­lal Per­sad in No­vem­ber last year.

The law­suit cen­tred around Per­sad’s in­ter­est in pur­su­ing a trade dis­pute against his for­mer em­ploy­er over the dis­missal/ter­mi­na­tion of his em­ploy­ment.

In No­vem­ber 2019, the Min­istry of Labour is­sued a cer­tifi­cate of un­re­solved dis­pute and re­ferred the is­sue of whether Per­sad was in good fi­nan­cial stand­ing with the union to the board.

Per­sad and the union sued the board af­ter it ruled that Per­sad was not in good stand­ing be­cause the union did not have a bank ac­count.

In the law­suit, Jus­tice Charles had to de­ter­mine whether the board was al­lowed to in­tro­duce a prac­tice note re­quir­ing a union to have a bank ac­count.

Jus­tice Charles not­ed that Sec­tion 34(3) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) states that the board should be sat­is­fied that a union fol­lowed sound ac­count­ing prac­tices and the work­er had made union con­tri­bu­tions at least two months be­fore ini­ti­at­ing a trade dis­pute to find that a work­er is in good stand­ing.

In her judg­ment, Jus­tice Charles ruled that the IRA did not give the board the pow­er to cre­ate reg­u­la­tions al­ter­ing the terms of Sec­tion 34.

She al­so ruled that the board act­ed un­fair­ly by mak­ing the de­ci­sion with­out giv­ing the Per­sad and the union an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard.

In de­cid­ing the case, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that Charles made er­rors when rul­ing on the ef­fect of the prac­tice note.

“It has not been proven that the RRCB used the prac­tice notes as a fet­ter on its dis­cre­tion,” Jus­tice Smith said.

The pan­el al­so ruled that the judge’s crit­i­cism over the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with the union af­ter the de­ci­sion was un­found­ed.

Stat­ing that there was no breach of nat­ur­al jus­tice, the pan­el ruled that it was sat­is­fied that the union knew that the lack of a bank ac­count could be con­sid­ered a breach of sound ac­count­ing prac­tices.

The work­er and the union were rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Rhea Khan, while Coreen Find­ley rep­re­sent­ed the RRCB.