THE DISMISSAL of some 400 workers at the Jamalco plant, Halse Hall, Clarendon in December, constitutes a dispute which can be heard by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT).
This was the advice given to Minister of Labour and Social Security, Donald Buchanan, earlier this week by the Attorney General's Department. Mr. Buchanan is now expected to refer the matter to the IDT for resolution.
Mr. Buchanan said yesterday that a special division of IDT would be established to hear the matter, in view of its "requisite importance" in terms of local industrial relations practices as well as the need to have it dealt with expeditiously.
The Ministry had been awaiting the AG's advice for several weeks, after the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU) reported a dispute over the dismissal of the workers, which it described as an act of union busting. Jamalco said it had no dispute with the union.
The entire hourly-paid bargaining unit represented by the union and numbering approximately 400 workers were made redundant on Decem-ber 5. Jamalco is owned jointly by the Government of Jamaica and Alcoa.
Following the redundancies, the company required those workers who wished to be re-employed to each form themselves into a limited liability company registered by the Registrar of Companies, in order to be re-employed.
A meeting at the Ministry on January 10 failed to resolve the issue.
The Halse Hall plant was hit by a wildcat strike by the UAWU-represented workers on October 9, triggered by a dispute over the retention of a clause in the labour contract indexing their wages to the US dollar. The workers went on strike without giving the company the required 72-hour strike notice.
The plant was officially closed on October 11, but the following day the IDT ordered that normality resume by October 15.
The management subsequently laid-off the workers and effected a maintenance schedule which should have lasted four weeks. The parties started negotiations on a new labour agreement, in the interim, but the company made the workers redundant after the union rejected several of its proposals.
