The Privy Coun­cil has re­served its judg­ment on an ap­peal from a trade union over a de­ci­sion to de­ny a for­mer bank work­er ac­cess to the In­dus­tri­al Court be­cause it (the trade union) did not have a bank ac­count.

Af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court in Lon­don, Eng­land, yes­ter­day, five British Law Lords re­served their de­ci­sion on the ap­peal brought by the Sanc­tu­ary Work­ers’ Trade Union and for­mer RBC Roy­al Bank em­ploy­ee Mi­toon­lal Per­sad against the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion, and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB).

In the ap­peal, the union and Per­sad are con­tend­ing that three Court of Ap­peal judges erred when they over­turned the de­ci­sion of a High Court judge to up­hold their case in 2021.

The law­suit cen­tred around Per­sad’s in­ter­est in pur­su­ing a trade dis­pute against his for­mer em­ploy­er over the dis­missal or 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 Joan 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), which 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, finds that a work­er is in good stand­ing. Jus­tice Charles ruled that the IRA did not give the board the pow­er to cre­ate reg­u­la­tions al­ter­ing the terms of Sec­tion 34.

Jus­tice Charles al­so ruled that the board act­ed un­fair­ly when it made its de­ci­sion with­out al­low­ing Per­sad and the union to be heard.

In over­turn­ing the judg­ment in 2022, Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Mal­colm Holdip, and Vasheist Kokaram ruled that their col­league made er­rors when rul­ing on the ef­fect of the prac­tice note.

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

It al­so 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.