JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Privy Council rules in favour of fired garbage collector

by

Derek Achong
1769 days ago
20200713

The Of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) has lost its fi­nal ap­peal against the In­dus­tri­al Court’s de­ci­sion to award com­pen­sa­tion to a for­mer Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion work­er who was im­prop­er­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. 

De­liv­er­ing judg­ment yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­missed the ap­peal which was brought by the CPO’s Of­fice against the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union. 

The ap­peal cen­tred around the cor­po­ra­tion’s em­ploy­ment of garbage com­pactor dri­ver Daniel Ri­ley, who was first hired in 1983. 

In May 1999, Ri­ley was charged with steal­ing 72 litres of gaso­line. He was sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of his case. Al­though Ri­ley was even­tu­al­ly ac­quit­ted by a mag­is­trate, the cor­po­ra­tion, through the CPO’s Of­fice, ini­ti­at­ed dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against him. 

The dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings be­gan in March 2002 but were on­ly com­plet­ed in Jan­u­ary 2007. 

While the tri­bunal was re­quired to de­liv­er its rul­ing in 10 days, it did so al­most a year lat­er.  

Ri­ley was found guilty of the charge and was ter­mi­nat­ed from the date of the al­leged of­fence. 

The union filed a trade dis­pute in the In­dus­tri­al Court, which was even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed in Ri­ley’s favour. The In­dus­tri­al Court or­dered that he be re­in­stat­ed to his po­si­tion and com­pen­sa­tion based on his loss of earn­ings dur­ing the pe­ri­od of his lengthy sus­pen­sion. 

The CPO ap­pealed the de­ci­sion but lost in the Court of Ap­peal, which up­held the In­dus­tri­al Court’s de­ci­sion that there had been a breach of the cor­po­ra­tion’s griev­ance pro­ce­dure which re­sult­ed in sub­stan­tial pro­ce­dur­al un­fair­ness. 

In the judg­ment, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that it had the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the ap­peal de­spite the In­dus­tri­al Court’s ex­clu­sive con­trol of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions lit­i­ga­tion. 

Lord David Kitchin, who wrote the judg­ment, al­so stat­ed that the In­dus­tri­al court’s find­ings in the case were cor­rect. 

“The fail­ures by the cor­po­ra­tion were so sub­stan­tial that, in the In­dus­tri­al Court’s view, the le­gal­i­ty of the dis­ci­pli­nary process had been fa­tal­ly un­der­mined, nec­es­sar­i­ly ren­der­ing any sub­se­quent dis­missal for the al­leged of­fence un­fair,” Kitchin said. 

Kitchin al­so ruled that the Privy Coun­cil’s in­ter­ven­tion was not nec­es­sary as there had not been a sub­stan­tial mis­car­riage of jus­tice in the case. 

He al­so re­ject­ed the CPO’s claim that in cal­cu­lat­ing the com­pen­sa­tion for Ri­ley, the In­dus­tri­al Court failed to con­sid­er that he found a new job with sub­stan­tial earn­ings soon af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed. 

Not­ing that the CPO did not raise the is­sue in the In­dus­tri­al Court or at the Court of Ap­peal, Kitchin said: “It is far too late to raise it now.” 

The CPO was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Knox, QC, and Olivia Wybraniec. Anand Be­har­ry­lal, QC, Lemuel Mur­phy, Ganesh Sa­roop and Alvin Pariags­ingh. 


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored