EX-GPHA workers fate to be decided by Court of Appeal

MORE than 500 dismissed casual workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) besieged the Supreme Court premises, eager to hear judgement in the appeal filed by the authority against the payment of billions of cedis in compensation for the wrongful dismissal of 4,194 of them but they were disappointed.
The scheduled judgement at the Court of Appeal could not be delivered and was postponed to next Friday because a response to the statement of case of the ex-workers filed by the authority was not made available to the panel of judges.
Consequently, counsel for the parties met the judges in chambers to take the new date so that the judges could study the response and factor it into their judgement.
After the adjournment their lawyer and leaders took turns to speak to them regarding the need to exercise restraint and wait for the next date.
A Tema High Court on January 18, 2006 entered judgement in favour of the dismissed workers, some of whom worked for periods ranging from one year to 10 years, and ordered the payment of billions of cedis in damages for breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), compensation, severance award and costs.
The court ordered that ¢5 million should be paid to each of the ex-workers as damages for breach of the CBA, ¢10 million to each of them for each year of service after the expiration of 154 days of continuous work in the authority as compensation for illegal conduct in keeping them as casual workers, violation of their economic rights and discrimination against them contrary to the 1992 Constitution.
Furthermore, severance award comprising three months salary for each year of service, ¢3 million in lieu of rent, ¢2 million for medicals, two bags of rice, two gallons of oil, 2001 bonus for those who qualified and ¢1.5 million as conveyance fees should be given.
The rest were five months salary as handshake, long service award, interest on all sums due each of the ex-workers at current commercial bank rate from October 1, 2002 to date of judgement and ¢10 million as costs.
The suit was filed by five of the dismissed workers on behalf of the rest.
But the authority appealed against the decision, describing the awards as meaningless, perverse and baseless in law and prayed for it to be set aside.
According to the facts of the case, the respondents were employed by the authority as casual or non-permanent employees until September 2002 when the re-organisation led to their being laid off without receiving any payment in lieu of notice apart from “some meagre amounts described by the authority as golden handshake”.
However, they said, detailed severance packages were paid to each of the authority’s permanent employees.
They stated that by the provisions of the various CBAs negotiated on their behalf at various times during their employment with the authority, they ought to have been made permanent employees after working continuously for 154 days in a calendar year.
They said if the authority could not absorb them as permanent employees they ought to have been placed on guaranteed wages/salaries equivalent to the monthly wages/salaries of classified jobs.
In its statement of appeal the authority stated that the trial judge erred in giving judgement for all the ex-workers as if they were parties in the action although the record of proceedings and the relevant rules of the court clearly indicated that they were not.
According to the authority, it was during the trial that the ex-workers filed a document entitled “ List of Plaintiffs” to which was annexed the list of 3,839 others and a subsequent motion to add 356 more people as plaintiffs.
It said the judge’s finding that the authority acted illegally and unlawfully in treating the ex-workers as non-permanent employees “for all the periods of the plaintiff’s employment with the defendant”, was erroneous, there being no evidence on record of the period of employment of each of the ex-workers.
“Again the appellant contends that there was no evidence on record that any of the plaintiffs had worked satisfactorily for 154 days in any year to qualify for upgrading as a permanent employee or to warrant the finding by the trial judge that the defendant had breached the CBA,” the authority said.
Furthermore, it stated that there was no evidence in support of the finding that the ex-workers had worked continuously for “periods between one year and 10 years” or had qualified for permanent employment.
The trial judge, it argued, misinterpreted the CBA in holding that the authority was obliged to engage on a regular basis a casual employee who had worked for 154 days.
It said the trial judge erred in finding that the authority violated the provisions of the 1992 Constitution and the CBA because the court did not appreciate the ex-worker’s tenure of employment, which was temporary, casual and determinable at the close of each day.
“It was only where a worker suffered diminution in his or her condition that the employer was liable for severance pay,” it said.