Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) may have to pay more than $3 mil­lion to 13 con­tract work­ers it fired af­ter the 2021 elec­tions. That’s the fall­out of an In­dus­tri­al Court rul­ing de­liv­ered since April 30, which found the ter­mi­na­tions were un­fair, un­law­ful, and like­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

The court or­dered the THA to com­pen­sate the work­ers for all out­stand­ing va­ca­tion leave, pro-rat­ed gra­tu­ity, and the full val­ue of what was left on their con­tracts. The Ad­vo­cate Trade Union (ATU), which rep­re­sent­ed the group, has un­til May 29 to sub­mit a break­down of what each work­er is owed. A fi­nal court or­der will fol­low by June 30.

Some of the 13 work­ers had been em­ployed with the THA’s Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship Unit (CPU) since 2009. But on March 31, 2022, they were all called in­to a meet­ing and hand­ed dis­missal let­ters. The THA claimed the CPU was be­ing shut down as part of a re­struc­tur­ing. But the court said it found no proof of any re­al re­struc­tur­ing—no pol­i­cy pa­pers, meet­ing min­utes, or even an up­dat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart.

In­stead, it said the de­ci­sion to fire the work­ers ap­peared rushed, harsh, and un­sup­port­ed. It al­so point­ed out sev­er­al con­tra­dic­tions in the THA’s de­fense. For in­stance, the dis­missal let­ters said the CPU was “un­der re­view,” but in court, the THA claimed the unit had al­ready been abol­ished. The court al­so not­ed that a key meet­ing men­tioned in the let­ters nev­er ac­tu­al­ly took place.

The work­ers earned vary­ing salaries based on their po­si­tions, with month­ly pay rang­ing from $7,000 to over $13,000. Some had up to 33 months re­main­ing on their con­tracts when they were ter­mi­nat­ed.

The court said there was no se­ri­ous at­tempt to con­sult or re­as­sign the work­ers, and it ruled the dis­missals as “harsh and op­pres­sive,” in vi­o­la­tion of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

The union al­so ar­gued that the ter­mi­na­tions were po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven, point­ing to Ar­ti­cle 5 of the ILO Con­ven­tion C158, which pro­hibits dis­missals based on po­lit­i­cal opin­ion. The court not­ed this as a se­ri­ous con­cern, es­pe­cial­ly since one of the ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers is the wife of THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris.