THE JUDICIAL Review Court yesterday upheld a ruling by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT) that the Jamaica Flour Mills' (JFM) decision in 1999 to make three production workers redundant, was "unjustifiable".
Simon Sukie, Michael Campbell and Ferron Gordon are to be reinstated as the Tribunal had directed.
"I think it is a decision which should beneficially affect the approach by management in redundancy situation," Lord Anthony Gifford, Q.C., said yesterday after the court dismissed JFM's motion. Lord Gifford had represented the National Workers Union (NWU) which appeared as an interested party in the motion.
The JFM had filed a motion in the Supreme Court seeking to set aside the Tribunal's ruling that the workers should be reinstated.
The Tribunal's ruling had sparked great controversy within industrial relations circles. The Tribunal in a 2-1 majority award in October last year had agreed with the NWU's view that the redundancies were not genuine as they breached the Labour Relations Code (LRC).
The company had claimed that the redundancies were in accordance with the Employment Termination and Redundancy Payment Act. The workers were made redundant as part of JFM's structural reorganisation, the JFM said.
The JFM sought to set aside the Tribunal's ruling on the ground that the Tribunal did not interpret the Act properly. JFM also suggested that the question of unfair dismissal could not arise.
In handing down its decision, the court agreed with the Tribunal that the JFM had breached the LRC because it did not consult with the workers or their representative (the NWU) in relation to the redundancy. It was the court's ruling that the arguments put forward by JFM were "wholly misconceived".
Members of the Judicial Review Court are Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe, Mr. Justice Neville Clarke and Mr. Justice Horace Marsh.
