NWRHA ordered to pay $75K for wrongful termination

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) has been or­dered to pay $75,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a for­mer em­ploy­ee it wrong­ful­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered last week, In­dus­tri­al Court Judges Dr Sel­wyn Sama­roo, Caron Lon­don and Rudranath In­dars­ingh up­held a trade dis­pute brought against the au­thor­i­ty by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) on be­half of hos­pi­tal at­ten­dant Ed­ing­ton Lewis.

The case re­lat­ed to a de­ci­sion tak­en by the au­thor­i­ty not to re­new Lewis’ con­tract in Au­gust 2019 af­ter he had been em­ployed for al­most 15 months.

In tak­ing the de­ci­sion not to of­fer him fur­ther em­ploy­ment, the au­thor­i­ty ref­er­enced a staff ap­praisal re­port in which Lewis was rat­ed “fair” in terms of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and cus­tomer re­la­tions and “poor” in at­ten­dance and punc­tu­al­i­ty.

In the case, the union, which was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Marc Ba­hadoors­ingh, claimed that Lewis re­ceived a writ­ten warn­ing let­ter months be­fore the de­ci­sion was tak­en, and he was not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

The pan­el found that the au­thor­i­ty failed in its du­ty to in­voke its dis­ci­pli­nary process un­der the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (Con­duct Reg­u­la­tions) 2008 be­fore seek­ing to take ac­tion against Lewis.

“It is the Court’s po­si­tion that the Au­thor­i­ty has (and had in this mat­ter) an oblig­a­tion to in­voke the process­es laid down by Par­lia­ment for the treat­ment of mis­con­duct of em­ploy­ees,” Dr Sama­roo said.

He al­so crit­i­cised the au­thor­i­ty for fail­ing to en­gage in per­for­mance man­age­ment to as­sist Lewis in im­prov­ing his per­for­mance be­fore the ap­praisal was done.

“Em­ploy­ers are ad­vised that per­for­mance man­age­ment can as­sist an er­rant em­ploy­ee to cor­rect iden­ti­fied mis­con­duct pri­or to any up­com­ing per­for­mance as­sess­ment,” Dr Sama­roo said.

He found that Lewis’ ter­mi­na­tion was harsh and op­pres­sive and not in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Lewis, the pan­el con­sid­ered the au­thor­i­ty’s pro­ce­dur­al vi­o­la­tions as the egre­gious man­ner of his dis­missal.

It al­so con­sid­ered his rel­a­tive­ly short ser­vice and the fact that the au­thor­i­ty paid him for three months af­ter he stopped work­ing based on the de­ci­sion.

The au­thor­i­ty was di­rect­ed to make the pay­ment by the end of this month.

The au­thor­i­ty was rep­re­sent­ed by its act­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and com­pen­sa­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion man­ag­er Josanne Og­a­ro.