The Cost of Justice Pt III: Close to 300 Industrial Court judgments outstanding for nearly a decade

The ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in any ju­ris­dic­tion is sup­posed to be fair, im­par­tial and ac­ces­si­ble.

But for years, de­lays have raised a hard­er ques­tion: if jus­tice comes too late, who is the sys­tem re­al­ly serv­ing?

In Part I, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ex­am­ined how de­lay im­pact­ed ac­cused peo­ple be­fore tri­al and Part II showed how some pris­on­ers died be­fore their mat­ters were com­plet­ed in court.

In Part III we look at an­oth­er as­pect of the jus­tice sys­tem: the In­dus­tri­al Court, where de­lay does not usu­al­ly mean prison time, but can mean years of un­cer­tain­ty over jobs, wages, ben­e­fits, dis­missals, unions and work­place rights.

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

Work­ers have gone to the In­dus­tri­al Court seek­ing jus­tice.

Years lat­er, some are still wait­ing for a judge to de­cide who was right, af­ter the Court had al­ready heard the mat­ter, in some cas­es near­ly 10 years ago.

Ac­cord­ing to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­sponse filed by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk, some In­dus­tri­al Court judg­ments re­mained re­served for up to nine years and nine months.

The records showed 13 In­dus­tri­al Court judges, who have been rec­om­mend­ed for reap­point­ment, have a com­bined 263 out­stand­ing judg­ments un­der their names.

The high­est fig­ures were list­ed for His Ho­n­our Melvin Daniel, with 78 out­stand­ing judg­ments; His Ho­n­our Azeem Mo­hammed, with 64; His Ho­n­our Lawrence Achong, with 38; His Ho­n­our Her­bert Sover­all, with 20; and Her Ho­n­our Michelle Ann Austin, with 17.

The old­est list­ed out­stand­ing judg­ment was Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) vs Fortress Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice Lim­it­ed.

The mat­ter was filed on June 2, 2014. Judg­ment was re­served on Ju­ly 14, 2016. As of April 2026, it had been re­served for nine years and nine months.

The mat­ter was as­signed to His Ho­n­our Patrick Ra­bathaly to draft a judg­ment.

The sec­ond old­est was Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) vs Swis­s­port.

It was filed on June 17, 2013. Judg­ment was re­served on Ju­ly 20, 2016. As of April 2026, it had al­so been re­served for nine years and nine months.

That mat­ter was as­signed to His Ho­n­our Melvin Daniel.

Of the 10 old­est mat­ters, every one in­volved a union.

Sev­en­teen years be­fore judg­ment was re­served

But the record al­so showed an­oth­er type of de­lay.

Some dis­putes took years be­fore judg­ment was even re­served.

The longest was Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) Ltd vs CWU.

It was filed on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2008. Judg­ment was re­served on May 14, 2025. That was a gap of 6,293 days, or just over 17 years. The mat­ter was as­signed to Her Ho­n­our Michelle Ann Austin to draft a judg­ment.

The sec­ond longest was CGA Lim­it­ed vs Union of Com­mer­cial and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers (UCIW), filed on Ju­ly 8, 2009, with judg­ment re­served on Jan­u­ary 24, 2024 — about 14 years and six months lat­er.

The third was Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas Lim­it­ed vs Steel­Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SWUTT), filed on May 28, 2014, with judg­ment re­served on March 16, 2026 — about 11.8 years lat­er.

Arcelor­Mit­tal is one ex­am­ple of a dis­pute out­liv­ing the work­place. The Point Lisas plant shut down in 2016, dis­plac­ing over 600 work­ers.

All mat­ters list­ed in­volved a union.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk al­so checked the FOIA dis­clo­sure against pub­lic In­dus­tri­al Court and court records.

The FOIA dis­clo­sure list­ed CWU vs Fortress Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice Lim­it­ed as an out­stand­ing mat­ter re­served since Ju­ly 2016. How­ev­er, the In­dus­tri­al Court’s 2018 judg­ment-de­liv­ered list records TD 326/14, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union vs Fortress Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, as de­liv­ered on June 11, 2018.

The FOIA dis­clo­sure al­so list­ed NUGFW vs Ude­cott as an out­stand­ing mat­ter re­served since Ju­ly 2019. How­ev­er, the In­dus­tri­al Court’s 2023 judg­ment-de­liv­ered list records TD 393/16, NUGFW vs Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as de­liv­ered on De­cem­ber 13, 2023.

Un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, the In­dus­tri­al Court is a su­pe­ri­or court of record.

It can hear and de­ter­mine trade dis­putes, reg­is­ter col­lec­tive agree­ments, hear mat­ters re­lat­ing to those agree­ments, re­strain in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and hear in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fences.

The Act al­so states that the Court must move quick­ly. Sec­tion 17 states: “The Court shall ex­pe­di­tious­ly hear, in­quire in­to and in­ves­ti­gate every dis­pute.”

The law gives the Court broad pow­ers to man­age cas­es. It states the Court may “give all such di­rec­tions” need­ed for the “ex­pe­di­tious and just hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion” of trade dis­putes and oth­er mat­ters be­fore it.

There is al­so a spe­cif­ic judg­ment time­line for mat­ters in the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

The Act shows those mat­ters should, once the hear­ing starts, be heard from day to day “as far as pos­si­ble” un­til com­plet­ed.

It then states: “Judg­ment… shall be de­liv­ered not lat­er than 30 days” from com­ple­tion of the hear­ing, ex­cept in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

Where ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances arise, the law says judg­ment must be de­liv­ered “not lat­er than 21 days” af­ter the 30-day pe­ri­od, and the rea­son for the de­lay must be stat­ed in the judg­ment.

The records did not show de­lays of days or months; they showed some judg­ments re­served for years.

The records al­so did not show the cri­te­ria used to rec­om­mend each judge for reap­point­ment. It did not state whether the num­ber of out­stand­ing judg­ments was con­sid­ered, as well as the age. Nei­ther was there any pro­nounce­ment on whether there was a lim­it be­yond which a judge can­not be rec­om­mend­ed for reap­point­ment.

The FOIA re­sponse said the Court has tak­en steps to push judges to fin­ish out­stand­ing judg­ments be­fore their terms ex­pire.

It said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was in­formed “about six months in ad­vance” of ap­point­ments ex­pir­ing, so time­ly reap­point­ments or ap­point­ments can avoid judges hav­ing to seek ex­ten­sions “to com­plete part-heard mat­ters and de­liv­er out­stand­ing judg­ments.”

The re­sponse al­so said judges whose terms are end­ing are, where pos­si­ble, giv­en a re­duced sched­ule of new mat­ters. Judges are al­so en­cour­aged to de­liv­er sim­pler de­ci­sions us­ing “their own notes,” in­stead of wait­ing for ver­ba­tim notes in every mat­ter.

Where ver­ba­tim notes are de­layed, the re­sponse said judges are en­cour­aged to use “Tur­bo Scribe AI tran­script” and au­dio record­ings “in or­der to speed up de­liv­ery of their rul­ings and judg­ments.”

The Court al­so said that “at least once each Court term,” a list of out­stand­ing judg­ments is cir­cu­lat­ed to judges, with their at­ten­tion drawn to the need to ad­dress those mat­ters.

Those mea­sures showed the Court has iden­ti­fied judg­ment de­liv­ery as an ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sue.

But the records al­so showed sev­er­al judg­ments were al­ready out­stand­ing for years.

The records showed that some judg­ments have been out­stand­ing since 2016. Over that same pe­ri­od, from fis­cal 2016 to fis­cal 2026, the In­dus­tri­al Court re­ceived $284.6 mil­lion in ap­proved bud­get al­lo­ca­tions.

The old­est dis­pute on the records was filed even ear­li­er, in 2008. If count­ed from that year to fis­cal 2026, the Court’s ap­proved al­lo­ca­tions to­tal $526.5 mil­lion.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk’s FOIA al­so asked for peremp­to­ry fix­tures that did not pro­ceed.

A peremp­to­ry fix­ture is sup­posed to be a firm date for a mat­ter to go on.

But the In­dus­tri­al Court’s re­sponse said: “The way the da­ta is stored cur­rent­ly on the courts’ data­base, it was not pos­si­ble to as­cer­tain whether the peremp­to­ry fix­tures did not pro­ceed as di­rect­ed by the Court.”

It added a new sys­tem is be­ing de­vel­oped.

If the Court can­not eas­i­ly state whether fixed hear­ing dates ac­tu­al­ly went ahead, it be­comes hard­er to know what caused the de­lay, who was re­spon­si­ble, and whether the Court’s own sched­ul­ing sys­tem is work­ing.

The In­dus­tri­al Court said there is “no law gov­ern­ing the de­liv­ery of judg­ments in the Gen­er­al Ser­vices Di­vi­sion,” al­though judges are ex­pect­ed and en­cour­aged to de­liv­er judg­ments prompt­ly.

For mat­ters in the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, the Court said the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act re­quires judg­ment with­in 30 days af­ter the hear­ing is com­plet­ed, ex­cept in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances. In those cas­es, judg­ment must be de­liv­ered with­in a fur­ther 21 days and the rea­son for the de­lay must be stat­ed in the judg­ment.

On reap­point­ments, In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent Heather Seale said the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act makes mem­bers el­i­gi­ble for reap­point­ment, but “does not stip­u­late the cri­te­ria” and does not pre­scribe what would make a mem­ber in­el­i­gi­ble for reap­point­ment.

The Court said every ap­point­ed mem­ber who has the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions can be rec­om­mend­ed for reap­point­ment.

Seale said out­stand­ing judg­ments are “of se­ri­ous con­cern,” but said they should not be the on­ly fac­tor when a judge is be­ing con­sid­ered again.

She said sev­er­al fac­tors can con­tribute to out­stand­ing judg­ments, in­clud­ing late fil­ings by par­ties, mat­ters be­ing re­heard, short­ages in the Court Re­port­ing sec­tion and de­lays in ap­point­ing or reap­point­ing judges.

On the TSTT/CWU mat­ter, which FOIA records showed was filed in 2008 and re­served for judg­ment in 2025, the Court said it was “by no means a typ­i­cal case.”

It said both sides asked for ad­journ­ments, the case was put on hold while an­oth­er case was be­ing de­cid­ed, and CWU filed its ev­i­dence, ar­gu­ments and wit­ness state­ments in June 2024 — more than nine years af­ter TSTT filed its ev­i­dence and ar­gu­ments in Jan­u­ary 2015.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go was al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment. No re­sponse had been re­ceived up to pub­li­ca­tion time.