TIWU loses bid to throw out expelled members’ lawsuit

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union has failed in its bid to have a law­suit over its move to ex­pel 10 long-stand­ing mem­bers dis­missed at a pre­lim­i­nary stage.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Fri­day, High Court Judge Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the union to strike out the law­suit brought by Nichola Bish­op, Ri­car­do Charles, Steve Khan, Gy­a­tre Lind­say, Camille Ot­t­ley, Lei­ba Phillips, Kevon Roberts, Can­dace Trot­man, Shelly Vil­lafana and Nigel Williams.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the union claimed the group did not have a le­git­i­mate cause of ac­tion, as the com­plaints in their law­suit con­sti­tut­ed a trade dis­pute that should be in­stead con­sid­ered by the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Jus­tice Dougdeen-Jaglal dis­agreed with the union's char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the law­suit af­ter con­sid­er­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al prece­dent-set­ting cas­es.

"Both lo­cal and UK cas­es es­tab­lished that bod­ies such as trade unions and as­so­ci­a­tion clubs are sub­ject to the su­per­vi­so­ry ju­ris­dic­tion of the courts to en­sure that the de­ci­sions they take, which have the po­ten­tial to im­pact liveli­hoods and the prospects of their mem­bers, are car­ried out in ac­cor­dance with the rule of law," Jus­tice Dougdeen-Jaglal said.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Dougdeen-Jaglal or­dered the union to pay the group's le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.

The mem­bers of the group, ex­cept Trot­man, all served on the union's branch­es for the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS).

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, they claimed that they were in­vit­ed by the union's ex­ec­u­tive to at­tend a ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween the union and MTS of­fi­cials. They claimed that when they ar­rived at the meet­ing, union of­fi­cials told them they were not al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate. They claimed that they chal­lenged the po­si­tion and were ver­bal­ly abused and threat­ened be­fore be­ing ex­pelled from the meet­ing.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, the group and sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers who sought to at­tend the meet­ing were served with sus­pen­sion let­ters block­ing them from en­gag­ing in trade union ac­tiv­i­ties.

The group wrote to the union's Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), un­der which the union falls, to com­plain about the dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

They were even­tu­al­ly in­vit­ed to ap­pear be­fore the com­mit­tee but they re­fused due to is­sues with the in­ves­tiga­tive process in­to the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against them.

All the mem­bers of the group, ex­cept Trot­man, were even­tu­al­ly ex­pelled from the union.

In the law­suit, pur­sued by their lawyer Richard Jag­gasar, the group claimed that their sus­pen­sions and even­tu­al ex­pul­sions were un­law­ful and in breach of the union's con­sti­tu­tion.

In de­fence of the case, the union claimed that some mem­bers of the group were dis­sat­is­fied with the re­sults of the union's ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. It con­tend­ed that they in­cit­ed the con­fronta­tion at the MTS meet­ing and dis­missed at­tempts from the union's pres­i­dent to re­solve their dis­agree­ment.

The union claimed that their con­duct was prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and they were charged with gross mis­con­duct. It claimed that the com­mit­tee took the de­ci­sion to ex­pel all ex­cept Trot­man af­ter they re­fused to de­fend the charge. It con­tend­ed that Trot­man's sus­pen­sion was based on her con­duct dur­ing a com­mit­tee meet­ing af­ter the in­ci­dent at MTS. It ac­cused Trot­man of ques­tion­ing the ap­point­ment of the union's gen­er­al sec­re­tary and of us­ing ob­scene lan­guage.

It not­ed that Trot­man was not re-elect­ed to the union's South Branch Com­mit­tee and as such could not per­form any union-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty.

The sub­stan­tive case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on No­vem­ber 18.