Derek Achong

Cash-strapped steel man­u­fac­tur­er Arcelor­Mit­tal has been fined by the In­dus­tri­al Court for the pro­ce­dure it used in lay­ing off over 500 of its em­ploy­ees in De­cem­ber last year.

De­liv­er­ing judg­ment at the court's head­quar­ters, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, its pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix crit­i­cised the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny for fail­ing to dis­cuss the tem­po­rary cost-cut­ting method with the Steel Work­ers' Union be­fore it was im­ple­ment­ed.

While Thomas-Fe­lix and her three col­leagues agreed that the com­pa­ny was al­lowed to send work­ers home tem­porar­i­ly in a bid to "rec­ti­fy its pre­car­i­ous eco­nom­ic po­si­tion," it could on­ly do so if it gave the union ad­vance no­tice and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to counter the pro­pos­al.

She added: "There is not a scin­til­la of ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy lay­offs with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion oth­er than dis­dain for or­der­ly ne­go­ti­a­tions and good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices."Hav­ing the right to lay off does not mean it can be ap­plied ar­bi­trar­i­ly or un­fair­ly."

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the case, the com­pa­ny ad­mit­ted that the lay-off was part of its fi­nan­cial re­struc­tur­ing as its prof­its had dwin­dled over the past two years due to a world­wide drop in steel prices.

In Oc­to­ber, last year, the com­pa­ny pro­posed that its work­ers take their va­ca­tion leave to fa­cil­i­tate the re­duc­tion in pro­duc­tion at its Point Lisas plant.

The union re­quest­ed time from the com­pa­ny to so­lic­it the views of the work­ers on the is­sue, but while do­ing so, the com­pa­ny con­tact­ed work­ers di­rect­ly, threat­en­ing a lay-off if the pro­pos­al was not ac­cept­ed.

The work­ers were even­tu­al­ly laid off on De­cem­ber 7, lead­ing the union to file the case against the com­pa­ny for fail­ing to prop­er­ly in­form it of the pro­pos­al and for by­pass­ing it by ne­go­ti­at­ing di­rect­ly with its mem­bers.

The com­pa­ny was fined $20,000 for the for­mer and $4,000 for the lat­ter of­fence af­ter be­ing found guilty by the court yes­ter­day.In its judg­ment, the court al­so ruled that the com­pa­ny act­ed un­fair­ly to­wards the work­ers by at­tempt­ing to force them to take the va­ca­tion pro­pos­al as de­cid­ing when to take their va­ca­tion was one of their fun­da­men­tal rights.

"The big stick ap­proach by the com­pa­ny in forc­ing the va­ca­tion leave pro­pos­al is ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate and is against the spir­it of co-op­er­a­tion," Thomas-Fe­lix said.As part of the court's judg­ment it or­dered the com­pa­ny to pay the work­ers' salaries for the pe­ri­od of the lay­off which fol­lowed the threat (De­cem­ber 7 to Jan­u­ary 15).

It al­so re­in­stat­ed the va­ca­tion leave of work­ers who ac­ced­ed to the com­pa­ny's threat be­fore be­ing laid off and al­lowed those work­ers who cashed in on their va­ca­tion time to keep the com­pa­ny's pay­ment as the court felt their de­ci­sions on the is­sue were com­pro­mised by the il­le­gal act of the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, the court was not asked to de­lib­er­ate on the com­pa­ny's de­ci­sion to lay off the work­ers for a sec­ond pe­ri­od which is due to ex­pire next Mon­day.Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the judg­ment was de­liv­ered the com­pa­ny's le­gal team in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to ap­peal and re­quest­ed that the or­ders of the court be stayed pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was strong­ly op­posed by the union and was even­tu­al­ly re­ject­ed by the four-mem­ber pan­el of In­dus­tri­al Court judges, who in­di­cat­ed that the ap­pli­ca­tion should be made to the Court of Ap­peal af­ter the ap­peal is filed.

Ad­dress­ing me­dia per­son­nel and scores of work­ers who gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house to await the judg­ment, the union's pres­i­dent Christo­pher Hen­ry praised the court's rul­ing in the case and the com­pen­sa­tion award­ed to his mem­bers.

"We have seen jus­tice done here to­day. This goes a long way in lift­ing the spir­its of our mem­bers who have been un­der tremen­dous fi­nan­cial pres­sure," Hen­ry said.

How­ev­er, he warned that the union would now have to re­sume its dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­ny over the fu­ture of its op­er­a­tions.

"We feel the way for­ward is for the par­ties to sit and have di­a­logue as to what is our fu­ture. It must be to put things on the ta­ble that will en­sure we have con­ti­nu­ity of em­ploy­ment for our work­ers and of the steel plant, which is a ma­jor rev­enue earn­er for T&T," Hen­ry said.

The union was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and An­tho­ny Bul­lock, while Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Derek Ali and Vanes­sa Gopaul ap­peared for the com­pa­ny.