Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE UNITED Kingdom Privy Council has upheld a Jamaican Court of Appeal ruling last year that three Jamaica Flour Mills Ltd. (JFM) employees, made redundant in 1999, were unjustifiably dismissed and should be reinstated.
Lord Anthony Gifford, Q.C., who represented the National Workers (NWU), which represented the workers, has described the decision as a landmark ruling. He said the Privy Council's decision, "vindicates the decision of the Court of Appeal and the interpretation of the law in our courts."
He said he expected the workers to be reinstated immediately.
The workers will have to be paid salaries from August 13, 1999, when they were made redundant to the date of their reinstatement.
The Privy Council agreed with the Industrial Disputes Tribunal and the Jamaican courts that the workers were unjustifiably dismissed and the Labour Relations Code breached because there was no consultation with the workers and their union before they were made redundant.
Reacting to the ruling, the JFM, in a release yesterday, said: "With reference to the judgement delivered today by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the matter of Jamaica Flour Mills Limited versus the Industrial Disputes Tribunal, our attorneys will be reviewing the decision and will advise the company of the way forward, thereafter."
However, the Privy Council has said that the concept of reinstatement has some flexibility about it and outlined in the judgement the necessary steps to be taken.
It said that in a case where there "is no suitable job into which the employee can be reinstated, the employer can immediately embark upon the process of dismissing the employee on the grounds of redundancy, this time properly fulfilling his obligations of communication and consultation under the Code."
The Industrial Disputes Tribunal had found in October 2000 that JFM breached the Labour Relations Code when it made the workers redundant without prior consultation between the employers and their union. The tribunal said they were unjustifiably dismissed and ordered their reinstatement.
Jamaica Flour Mills took the issue to the Supreme Court seeking an order to quash the tribunal's ruling. The Full Court comprising Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe, Mr. Justice Neville Clarke (now deceased) and Mr. Justice Horace Marsh, upheld the tribunal's ruling.
The JFM appealed the ruling, and the Court of Appeal, comprising the Hon. Ian Forte, president of the Court of Appeal, Mr. Justice Paul Harrison and Mr. Justice Clarence Walker, dismissed the appeal.
It said the employees` dismissals in this case was 'an outstanding example of man`s inhumanity to man and need not have been so.'
The workers are Simon Suckie, Michael Campbell and Ferron Gordon. Two of the workers had been with the company for 13 years and the other for 28 years. They have been off the job since they were made redundant because of JFM's legal battle to set aside the order for reinstatement.
The JFM claimed that it acted in strict conformity with the Employment Termination and Redundancy Payments Act. It said it did not notify the workers or their union of the decision to make them redundant because it feared notification would have resulted in sabotage of the company's plant.
Two of the workers had accepted their severance pay and the JFM claimed that, in so doing, they waived their legal rights to reinstatement in their jobs.
The Privy Council, in dismissing JFM's appeal, said that the cashing of the cheques could not be taken to be any clear indication that the employees were intending to abandon their statutory rights under the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act.
The court notes that "reinstatement does not necessarily require that the employee be placed at the same desk or machine or be given the same work in all respects as he or she had been given prior to the unjustifiable dismissal."
It said if there was no suitable job into which the employee could be reinstated then the employer could make the employee redundant and abide by the obligations of communication and consultation under the Labour Relations Code.
