The new Employment Rights Act puts an end to “the days of employers walking in at 4:30 on afternoons and handing a man a letter and telling him to walk through the door,” warns trade unionist Denis De Peiza.
Instead, the general secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados said, the act “brings to the table a set of standards that are designed to protect the interests of both the employee and the employer”. He also warned human resource (HR) managers that “we have to follow the rules of the game”.
Participating in a panel discussion organized by the Human Resource Management Association of Barbados (HRMAB) Wednesday, De Peiza described the legislation as “a friendly act” that was both “employer- and employee-friendly”.
He said it did not remove the employer’s right to protect his interests, but “what it does is to ensure that the unfair practices are removed”.
Panellist Arni Walters, chief operations manager of the Barbados Cane Industry Corporation, warned that employers would now have “to gird themselves and gird their loins and make sure that they go and present proper cases before the tribunal”.
Walters said Barbados had operated for about 70 years with “a voluntarist industrial relations programme” and had for a long time been using the common law related to industrial practices.
However he said a lot of this would change “once we move to trying to manage the Employment Rights Act provisions,” and he advised it was not going to be an easy task.
In his presentation, the third panellist, Justice Leroy Inniss, presented examples of industrial relations cases where rulings had been given by the courts.
Moderator of the discussion, HR consultant Dr Hensley Sobers in summary said submissions by the three panellists reinforced the importance of establishing sound disciplinary procedures as well as the need to give employees “the particulars” of the employment conditions under which they are contracted.
Sobers cautioned HRMAB members, “We have moved away from what used to be more unilateral decision-making by the management to one that is going to be governed largely by regulation, by your own rules, contract employment and more particularly, the law.” (GC)
