A senior healthcare administrator has lost his discrimination lawsuit against the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) over not being shortlisted for a position which he previously held for ten days before being terminated.
Delivering a judgment late last week, Equal Opportunity Tribunal (EOT) chairman Donna Prowell-Raphael and lay-assessor Lenore Harris dismissed Simon Wiltshire’s discrimination case against the public health authority.
In the case, Wiltshire claimed that the NWRHA victimised him when it did not shortlist him to be interviewed for the position of chief operating officer (COO) in 2017.
He claimed that the treatment was based on a trade dispute he filed against the NWRHA after it terminated him from the position ten days into his two-year contract in June 2010.
The Industrial Court ordered $708,000 in compensation as it ruled that his termination was harsh, oppressive, and contrary to good industrial relations.
In defence of the complaint before the EOT, the NWRHA denied any wrongdoing as it called its chairman Lisa Agard and former CEO Salisha Baksh as witnesses.
It claimed that the complaint should be rejected as Wiltshire did not raise any valid grounds for taking the action under the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA).
In the judgment, the tribunal had to consider whether the complaint related to the Industrial Relations Act (IRA) could be considered by it.
It ruled that the IRA could not be considered “relevant law” under the EOA based on the circumstances of Wiltshire’s case.
“While the IRA may intersect with discrimination in cases where a trade dispute includes discriminatory practices, it does not explicitly address discrimination in the manner contemplated by the EOA,” Prowell-Raphael said.
She also noted that even if the IRA applied, Wiltshire failed to prove that his qualifications were comparable to the shortlisted candidates and that the trade dispute was directly responsible for him being excluded.
“Simply enumerating and evaluating his own expertise in his witness statement and asserting his suitability do not meet the burden of establishing that his qualifications were similar or analogous to those of the shortlisted candidates,” she said.
“Moreover, although the complainant contends that knowledge of the trade dispute could be inferred, there is notably no evidence to attribute knowledge of the complainant’s trade dispute to the Chairman at the time she made the shortlist, whether through systemic means or institutional knowledge, nor to demonstrate that such knowledge played a role in the decision making process,” she added.
Wiltshire was ordered to pay the authority $14,500 in legal costs for his failed complaint.
In February 2022, Wilshire was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of the Tobago Regional Health Authority.
However, he was terminated by the TRHA board, chaired by Christlyn Moore, a little over a year later.
Wiltshire was represented by Nigel Floyd, while Ravindra Nanga and Alana Bissessar represented the NWRHA.