An Industrial Court ruling against Tucker Energy Services Limited will see the company paying out just over $1 million to three former employees. The ruling was handed down yesterday by Industrial Court president, Deborah Thomas-Felix and members Albert Aberdeen and Bindimatie Mahabir.
The dispute was brought by the Contractors and General Workers Trade Union on behalf of Richard Noel, Jason Philbert and Steve Collins. Attorney Asaf Hosein represented the union while industrial relations consultant Lindhurst Murray appeared on behalf of Tucker.
The three men were dismissed on September 15, 2006. At the time Noel had been employed by Tucker for 11 years, Philbert had been employed for four years and Collins had been employed for 14 years. Collins was awarded $500,000, Noel was awarded $350,000 and Philbert was awarded $175,000.
Thomas-Felix ordered the total sums to be paid on or before December 21, 2015. The dispute was centred around whether Tucker dismissed or retrenched Noel, Collins and Philbert in 2006.
The union brought the case that some time in 2004 there was an incident when a forklift was allegedly driven into the wall of an office. Tucker’s employees, including the aggrieved trio, refused to disclose the name of the forklift driver.
The employees were told a day’s salary would be deducted from their salaries over the incident. Soon after the employees joined the union and came to realise the company had not been paying them remunerations as accorded to them in the collective agreement.
The workers met with the union but were not satisfied with the union’s response to their claims and later contacted the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) for advice. The union stated that when Tucker learned of the talks with the OWTU and believed the aggrieved workers were leading the “talks” with the OWTU.
As a result, Tucker dismissed the trio with immediate effect on September 15, 2006. The union contended that the workers were not given any advance notice and that it was not informed of any retrenchment exercise.
In its defence, Tucker maintained it was reorganising its operations and decided to remove the areas of welding and fabricating, the area in which the three men worked, from its business activities.
Thomas-Felix found the company summarily dismissed the aggrieved workers and the alleged retrenchment was used as a ruse to dismiss the workers.
The ruling also stated that the court found the dismissal of the workers was “harsh, oppressive and contrary to the principles and practices of good industrial relations.”