EX-GPHA WORKERS JUDGEMENT POSTPONED

THE judgement in the appeal filed by the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) against the payment of billions of cedis in compensation for the wrongful dismissal of 4,194 casual workers, for the second time, could not be delivered by the Court of Appeal.
Journalists were informed that the adjournment was to enable the lawyers to furnish the judges with some authorities they cited to enable them to deliver the judgement.
As usual the more than 300 of the dismissed casual workers of GPHA who besieged the Supreme Court premises, eager to hear the judgement, were disappointed.
Their leaders advised them to exercise restraint for the law to take its course.
At the last sitting on March 23, 2007, the judgement was scheduled for yesterday but it was again postponed to April 20, 2007, after lawyers in the case had met the judges in chambers.
On March, 23, 2007, the lawyers met the judges in chambers and it was agreed that the judges, who had just received a response by the authority, needed to study it in order to factor it into their judgement.
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.
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.