In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent Heather Seale has ex­pressed con­cern about the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion which she said is se­vere­ly im­pact­ing the busi­ness sec­tor by dis­rupt­ing the way com­pa­nies op­er­ate. Seale said crime has led to work­ers be­ing tardy for work of­ten lead­ing to dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

Ap­point­ed to re­place Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix in De­cem­ber, Seale presided over her first spe­cial sit­ting to mark the open­ing of the 2024-2025 law term yes­ter­day morn­ing. Crime emerged as a cen­tral top­ic dur­ing her maid­en ad­dress, where she dis­cussed its de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fects on the Trinidad and To­ba­go work­force and how it in­flu­ences ju­di­cial rul­ings at the in­dus­tri­al court.

“For ex­am­ple, in the area of tar­di­ness some work­ers may find it un­safe to leave their homes ei­ther too ear­ly or re­turn home too late and so may have dif­fi­cul­ty in ad­her­ing to their sched­uled hours of work, which in turn may lead to dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion. Con­verse­ly, em­ploy­ers may be forced to change their open­ing hours and mode of op­er­a­tion with cost and oth­er im­pli­ca­tions,” she ex­plained.

“There is al­so a neg­a­tive ef­fect on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when work­ers and/or their em­ploy­ers wit­ness vi­o­lent events or are them­selves or their close rel­a­tives the vic­tims of vi­o­lence. These are mat­ters for us all to con­sid­er,” she con­tin­ued.

With the evolv­ing work land­scape, Seale urged stake­hold­ers to de­vel­op poli­cies that align with con­tem­po­rary work trends. She high­light­ed the need to ad­dress flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ments, in­clud­ing tele­work­ing, hy­brid work, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), ze­ro-hour con­tracts, and un­lim­it­ed va­ca­tion leave.

“Like AI, tele­work­ing and hy­brid work may raise is­sues that re­quire new ap­proach­es and new chal­lenges for oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health. For ex­am­ple, what is a work­place, who should equip and out­fit the work­space, bear elec­tric­i­ty and in­ter­net costs when an em­ploy­ee is em­ployed at home?” she asked.

She al­so posed a cru­cial ques­tion: “If a tele­work­er is in­jured dur­ing the work­day but at home, would such an in­jury con­sti­tute a dere­lic­tion of the em­ploy­er’s gen­er­al du­ty to en­sure, so far as is rea­son­ably prac­ti­ca­ble, the safe­ty, health and wel­fare of the em­ploy­ee at work? These and sim­i­lar is­sues are al­ready the sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion in some ju­ris­dic­tions and are like­ly to arise in Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so.”

Seale ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion that the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions are not rigid­ly de­fined in the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, al­low­ing the court to adapt to so­ci­etal dy­nam­ics and chang­ing work en­vi­ron­ments.

Re­flect­ing on the court’s his­to­ry, Seale ac­knowl­edged that it has faced crit­i­cism through­out its ex­is­tence. Ap­proach­ing its 60th an­niver­sary next year, she not­ed that the court is some­times per­ceived as favour­ing ei­ther em­ploy­ers or em­ploy­ees, but she dis­agreed with this view.

“I agree that the pen­du­lum swings and at one time or an­oth­er we are per­ceived to be in the union’s or the em­ploy­er’s cor­ner. How­ev­er, ac­tu­al­ly, I be­lieve we are like the pen­du­lum at rest un­til our pow­ers are in­voked,” Seale said.

She ad­mit­ted that the court has ex­pe­ri­enced a de­cline in per­for­mance over the past year. The court dis­posed of 779 dis­putes with a clear­ance rate of 97.1 per cent, a de­crease from the pre­vi­ous year’s 921 dis­putes and 114.55 per cent clear­ance rate. There were 803 new cas­es filed across both the Gen­er­al and Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sions, com­pared to 804 last year.

Of the dis­putes filed, the largest cat­e­go­ry was gen­er­al dis­putes, to­talling 635 cas­es, fol­lowed by 48 re­trench­ment cas­es, sev­en ben­e­fit dis­putes, 38 oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health com­plaints, and 36 in­dus­tri­al emis­sions of­fences.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 220 judg­ments were de­liv­ered, 181 cas­es were with­drawn, 292 mat­ters were set­tled through con­cil­i­a­tion and bi­lat­er­al process­es, and 86 mat­ters were dis­missed.

The spe­cial sit­ting al­so high­light­ed the court’s on­go­ing ef­forts to mod­ernise through tech­nol­o­gy. Seale an­nounced that the In­dus­tri­al Court is work­ing to­wards be­com­ing an e-court and is seek­ing fund­ing through the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to sup­port com­put­er­i­sa­tion and im­prove­ments.