Submitted by Danny Gill
With regard to the recently retrenched workers at the NCC, a meeting for National Council of the NUPW was called. The General Secretary, Dennis Clarke, spoke to issues emanating from that retrenchment. These included, as he indicated: a breach of a Cabinet Policy of “last in first out”; breaches of the Employment Rights Act; an unwillingness by the NCC to sit and discuss the situation; beach of the CTUSAB Protocols; breach of an ILO Convention 158; and the appearance that the retrenchment process was biased in the favour of employees who could be viewed as constituents of the Minister with responsibility for the NCC.
What peeked my attention during the meeting was when I was asked by a fellow Councillor if I had received a call alerting me of the meeting. I replied in the negative. When the General Secretary began his list of grievances with the lamentations about people who could continue to attack him on the front page of the Nation Newspaper or on the blog, I realized why I possibly did not receive any calls from the NUPW on my cell or landline to alert me of the meeting.
From what I heard coming from the General Secretary, I had some concern that if the NUPW was not careful, the rights of those retrenched workers at the NCC would not be protected. Having sat down with the Labour Office, the General Secretary’s next move in the process must be a complaint to the Chief Labour Officer requesting that the Tribunal be set up to resolve the impasse between the NUPW and the NCC. The General Secretary seems to be of the belief that a meeting chaired by the Minister of Labour would have some impact on the impasse, but the Minister of Labour is not the administrator of the ACT; that power resides in the Office of the Chief Labour Officer. The only part of the Act that makes any reference to the Minister is in respect to making regulations.
Furthermore, when the NUPW makes the complaint to begin the process to convene the Tribunal, the Union has to make a case as to why its members have been unfairly dismissed. This is where the General Secretary’s arguments get very, very weak. His main defense, by what he said, lies in the fact the Cabinet of Barbados has posited the policy of “last in first out”, but what the NUPW has to clearly demonstrate is that this policy applies to Statutory Boards. For the purposes of the Employment Rights Act, Statutory Boards are treated in the same way as the private sector. Furthermore, the Act absolves ministries from its domain.
The NUPW has also to clearly demonstrate its political bias thesis, for many of the employees who went home were from St. Lucy, the constituency of the Minister’s fellow Cabinet Minister. Emotional outbursts by Wayne Walrond shall not be enough. Furthermore, the Act provides that before workers are dismissed that consultations must be conducted with the workers or their representatives at least six weeks before any one is dismissed. If that process did not occur, that may be the only ground for the NUPW to prevail in a case of unfair dismissal.
The General Secretary seems settled on the point that the retrenched workers were not given the proper paper work at the time of their retrenchment. However, if that is the basis of the Union’s complaint, those NCC worker shall remain retrenched, for the Act provides for the Tribunal only to order that proper documentation be provided, but in that case, no decision to reinstate would be possible. Obviously what the Union wants is a decision to rehire, but that can only come when the Union makes an appropriate complaint which would logically lead to such a decision. Given the current course, the General Secretary is taking, and if the process is not handled correctly, there is a possibility that even with a strong case, the NCC workers can remain retrenched.
As I sat there, it was clear that apart from the emotional hysteria and collective bargaining wishing and hoping that the General Secretary had not, or could not, make a solid case for strike action to be taken against the NCC or in the wider public service.
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