AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Un­til the le­gal­i­ty of their ter­mi­na­tions is de­ter­mined, six peo­ple are to con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing their salaries from the com­pa­nies which fired them due to a re­fusal to take the COVID-19 vac­cine.

Yes­ter­day, the In­dus­tri­al Court not on­ly ruled in favour of the em­ploy­ees but im­posed fur­ther fines on Waste Dis­pos­als (2023) Ltd and En­vi­rotech Hold­ings Lim­it­ed.

The work­ers were rep­re­sent­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU), and its sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der told Guardian Me­dia that they are pleased with the rul­ing, which he de­scribed as ev­i­dence that the jus­tice sys­tem does work.

“This is ba­si­cal­ly a land­mark rul­ing where we have work­ers be­ing pro­tect­ed with their salaries be­ing re­stored, their em­ploy­ment be­ing re­stored, and in­di­vid­u­als of the com­pa­ny be­ing fined for dis­obey­ing the or­ders of the court. So we are very hap­py with this judg­ment, we are pleased with this judg­ment, we will not be sur­prised if they don’t pay and of course there are con­se­quences to that too.

“But we be­lieve that to­day jus­tice was served and the whole ques­tion about forc­ing vac­ci­na­tion up­on work­ers while that is to be de­ter­mined. You can­not lock out work­ers and uni­lat­er­al­ly change the terms and con­di­tions of their em­ploy­ment at your whims and fan­cies,” El­der said.

El­der ex­plained that yes­ter­day’s hear­ing was the third time the union had to bring the two com­pa­nies be­fore the court for con­tempt. El­der said in De­cem­ber 2021 they ap­proached the In­dus­tri­al Court for an in­junc­tion to al­low the work­ers to be paid and for their terms of em­ploy­ment to re­main un­touched un­til the court hears the union’s ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence (IRO). The in­junc­tion was grant­ed, how­ev­er the CWU again re­turned to court in Jan­u­ary 2022 af­ter the waste dis­pos­al com­pa­nies did not ho­n­our the court’s rul­ing to pay the em­ploy­ees.

Even­tu­al­ly, the six work­ers were paid salaries for De­cem­ber 2021 and Jan­u­ary 2022 but pay­ments stopped soon af­ter. Again, the CWU went to court for an­oth­er con­tempt of court hear­ing where the com­pa­nies were then fined $20,000 each. Soon af­ter, in March, the six em­ploy­ees were ter­mi­nat­ed.

The five em­ploy­ees who worked at Waste Dis­pos­als (2023) Ltd are Deryck Ma­son, Ger­ard Wil­son, Julien Si­mon, Lester Quashie and Shel­don Primus. While the lone En­vi­rotech work­er is Janelle Whiskey.

Yes­ter­day, In­dus­tri­al Court judges, Her­bert Sover­all, Al­bert Ab­erdeen and Melvin Daniel or­dered that the em­ploy­er’s ap­pli­ca­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and ju­ris­dic­tion be dis­missed, the pay­ments of wages to the work­ers be con­tin­ued un­til the IRO is heard and de­ter­mined in keep­ing with the con­sent or­der and that the em­ploy­ers and named of­fi­cials are guilty of con­tempt.