THE QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER SOMEONE HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTIVELY DISMISSED IS ONE THAT ARISES MORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY. For those who want a very clear and definitive ruling on what constitutes constructive dismissal, one cannot do better than go to Lord Denning and we here do so, Quoting Lord Denning in Western Excavating (ECC) Ltd. V Sharp [1978] 1 […]
The term “progressive discipline” is often used in situations of industrial relations conflict where termination has taken place. This happens most often where the Industrial Court makes an award against an employer for not having dealt with the dismissal: “in accordance with the principles of good industrial relations” Progressive discipline is a graduated scale of disciplinary […]
Almost every week the press reports on yet another government enterprise “reorganizing” or “restructuring” which translated into English means retrenchment. While the weekly, or almost daily retrenchments in the private sector do not make the headlines, or get reported to the Minister of Labour as the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act only requires employers who […]
Employers are, with some justification, getting more and more nervous about dealing with employee grievances, given the multi-million dollars awards being given by the Industrial Court when they are messed up due to company mismanagement or just plain ignorance of good Industrial Relations practices. One of the sensitive areas before getting to a dismissal stage […]
The difference between gross misconduct and ordinary misconduct. “Gross misconduct” is misconduct that is so serious (“sufficiently grave” is the term legally used) that it may warrant dismissal for a one time and first offence. This is seldom used and must fit all the following criteria if it is not to end up expensively in […]
Recently a conciliation judgement recommended a Human Resources Audit which the HR Department of the company concerned had never heard of. A Human Resources Audit is a systematic method of reviewing existing Human Resource policies, procedures, documentation and systems to determine the “health” of the Human Resource function. This is often done by someone outside […]
Question: What does a company do when a charge of sexual harassment is made against a senior manager? Answer: Let me first explain: there are two recognized forms of sexual harassment. The first is known as “quid pro quo” which is where an employer promises reward or punishment to an employee if the employee does […]
Question: I am told by my General Manager that we have to retrench, at least 15% of our workforce, if we are to stay in operation while she finds some new customers. We make children’s clothes and our main customer in Barbados has shut down. We have 50 employees, mostly women who have families to […]
Question: Can you tell me what gives an employee the right to extended sick leave? We have an employee who has been on paid sick leave for three working weeks, all duly covered by doctors’ certificates, as you said. He has now sent in a note requesting another four weeks off enclosing a medical certificate […]
Question: When is it appropriate to use flexi-time? Answer: When it will make the organisation more efficient for less cost and when it solves problems faced by employees and customers. Banks and some retail stores, as well as some IT firms have used one variant of this system for years, hiring staff to work […]
