The Estate Police Association.. is considering its legal options.. to try to prevent Chairman of the Special Tribunal of the Industrial Court- Lawrence Achong.. from sitting on its case.. involving Royal Bank of Canada. The EPA.. says based on a recent Privy Council ruling.., Achong shoukd not hear their matter. Alicia Boucher has more.
00:00The matter set to return to the special tribunal concerns RBC's dismissal of 42 estate constables in 2014 and their replacement with contract labour.
00:10President of the Estate Police Association Derek Richardson is unsettled by the insistence of Chairman of the Tribunal Lawrence Achong that he will adjudicate in the matter.
00:20We met last week Monday in a mention and reporting and we were told by Mr Achong that there are dates for hearing in 2025, in April 2025 and in fact he will head the quorum for that hearing.
00:42However, when the EPA initially brought the matter before the special tribunal in 2021, the tribunal refused to hear the case saying that the EPA could not represent those workers in the absence of a branch board.
00:55The EPA took this to the High Court and lost. The association filed an appeal and won at the appeal court.
01:02But in 2022, the special tribunal, a judicial entity, took the EPA before the Privy Council, although RBC at that point was not a party to the proceedings.
01:13The Privy Council on May 30, 2024, ruled that the special tribunal was wrong and quote-unquote lost sight of the principles of impartiality and neutrality and it further stated that if possible, the EPA versus RBC case should be heard by a fresh panel, excluding any member of the board who heard the dispute previously.
01:35According to Richardson, Achong is the only sitting board member who was involved in the prior EPA-RBC hearing.
01:42We now have to go back to present the matter to him. How could that be justice? How? Why are we allowing this to happen? There's no provision in law for the recruitment of the chairman of the special tribunal.
02:03The EPA states that it wrote to the attorney general asking for that to be addressed, but at present nothing has been done. The association also says that it's not the only case in which it is questioning an Achong-led tribunal judgment, citing a matter which the association brought concerning its workers at the central bank.
02:22Richardson says while the CBTT offered workers under the Bankers Insurance and General Workers Union 14% for the period 2014 to 2017, it offered EPA workers 9%. The EPA took the matter before the tribunal, expecting to at least get the 9% the CBTT said it could pay at maximum.
02:43The special tribunal decided that they're wrong and instead awarded 6% to the estate police association.
02:54With a fear that it will not get an impartial hearing before the special tribunal under Achong, the EPA says it is examining the way forward.
03:04We did have a meeting with our lawyers and the lawyers say that they are currently exploring all legal arguments to see if it is possible to have him recused from that hearing that matter.
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