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Business News for Monday, February 22, 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-02-22
Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet)
A High Court in Accra has dismissed a legal action by Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) in the Labor Division of the Court, appealing to set aside an arbitration award for some 150 dismissed employees of the company.
The management of Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) says it is willing to pay severance pay to its workers laid off after legal proceedings.
According to a statement issued by the company’s management, they will explore all legal remedies and appeal the court’s ruling before any payments are made to staff.
“We are eager to complete the award process so that we can properly execute the compensation payments,” they said.
GCNET CEO Alwin Hoegerle explained that the anomalies detected when basing the compensation calculation on the company’s Human Resources policy manual, for which the management referred the matter to the NLC and the Superior Court, must be corrected so as not to make it difficult for the government to comply with its obligation to resolve the bill.
In arguing in court, the company said that the arbitration award was null and void because the GCNET Staff Welfare Association group did not have the capacity to represent workers because it was not registered as a statutory body and was not registered with the Chief Labor. Officer as a union. .
Meanwhile, the Court in its ruling held that GCNET must pay for the dismissal packages that appear in the company’s Human Resources manual because the dismissal package was already predetermined since it was established in a Memorandum of Understanding that the Staff Association and GCNET were for the implementation of the dismissal exercise and not for negotiation.
Background
GCNET is an information technology company that facilitates commercial services in the country’s ports and had a contract with the government that was expected to last until 2023.
In April 2020, the government terminated the contract that led to the closure of its operations in May 2020, this was because the government said that it was going to implement a new customized compensation system, called Uni-Pass, which would centralize processing and handling all Import and export documentation, a system known as one-stop shop clearing.
This resulted in GCNET laying off its staff and consequently notifying the Director of Labor of the planned layoff exercise.
Disagreement over severance payment arrangements, including the ability of the Welfare Staff Association to negotiate on behalf of some 148 affected workers, led management and workers to the Labor Commission, after which the arbitration panel The Commission, in its Sept. 14, 2020 Award, ruled that the provisions of the company’s Human Resources Policy Manual should be used to pay compensation to laid-off workers.
