[ad_1]
Mr. Austin Gamey – President of Gamey & Co ADR Center
Labor consultant Austin Gamey has denied claims that unseen hands prevented payment of exit packages for GCNet staff.
Mr. Gamey is a consultant for GCNet and some of the company’s staff have alleged that he was the one who advised the company not to pay for their exit packages.
This comes a day after workers went on a sit-down strike to pressure GCNet management to pay for their exit packages in accordance with the 2003 Labor Law.
Reacting in a radio interview with Accra based Citi FM monitored by Graphic Online, Mr. Gamey appealed to workers to be patient and secured their exit packages once GCNet has received a favorable review of the ruling from the National Labor Commission (NLC).
He said:
“Yes, as far as I know, the owners are not happy with the way everything turned out. Of course, you know that the government abrogated their agreement not by the will of the workers, nor by the will of the management. they fired them, it was the government that repealed the agreement between them and GCNet and handed over the contract to UNIPASS. As a result, the place was closed. “
“When the management was preparing, they were preparing to pay them, then because the government is going to be the one that will return the money to the owners, and they realized that the calculation was done incorrectly and the matter went to arbitration and It is being revised “.
“Once we complete the review, it will pay, I’m sure, but they will have to learn to be patient, but I don’t know how they will do it. It is up to the owners to decide what to do. I really have no hands on that,” Gamey said in the interview. with Citi FM.
Also read: GCNet loses arbitration, ordered to pay staff dismissal
A three-member arbitration panel under the auspices of the National Labor Commission (NLC) ruled in favor of around 150 Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) employees over a layoff dispute with GCNet.
Accordingly, the arbitration panel has ruled that GCNet is obligated to pay each staff member a severance package in accordance with company policy “without any adjustments or variations.”
“The effective date for the dismissal is August 31, 2020 and this will be the last day of employment of the affected personnel with GCNet,” the panel said in a ruling dated September 4, 2020.
The arbitrators appointed by the NLC and the two parties were Mr. Charles D. Antwi, Ms. Anita Wiafe Asinor and Mr. Paul Osei Mensah.
Termination
GCNet was an information technology company that used to facilitate commercial services in the country’s ports and had a government contract until 2023.
In April this year, the government terminated the contract, which caused the closure of its operations in May this year.
The government canceled the contract to allow the full deployment of a new customs clearance system, Uni-Pass, which according to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), would centralize the processing and handling of all import and export documentation, a system known as a single window cleaning system.
As a result of the termination of the contract, GCNET decided to lay off some of its staff and consequently notified the Labor Director of their possible layoff.
Human resources policy
The documents presented at the arbitration hearing showed that GCNet had a Human Resources Manual that obliges it to use a certain formula to pay its staff during a layoff exercise.
In view of the redundancy exercise, GCNet management and the Staff Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to implement redundancy in accordance with the Human Resources Manual.
As a result of the Memorandum of Understanding, GCNet management issued termination letters to affected personnel with redundancy scheduled to take effect on August 31 of this year, but payment must be made before June 30 of this year.
Dispute
According to the ruling, two days before the deadline for the severance package payment, GCNet management wrote to the Employees Association that it could not pay for the package and requested a renegotiation of the severance pay as stipulated in the Employee Manual. Human Resources.
This led to a dispute that ended at the NLC, and the two parties agreed to voluntary arbitration.
GCNet case
In GCNET’s case, the HR was a collective agreement, but the Staff Association was not a registered union and therefore, under the 2003 Labor Law, it could not enter into a collective agreement with the company.
In light of that, GCNET argued that the MOU it signed with the staff association was void and therefore non-binding.
In addition, GCNET argued that it did not have the funds to pay for the severance package listed in the HR Manual on the basis that the government of Ghana had not yet paid compensation for the termination of the contract, while it had not guarantee that the government would. even pay compensation.
Staff case
The staff association, for its part, presented a case that the HR policy or manual were the employment conditions developed by GCNET for all its staff, which it had been implementing since it started operations and, therefore, was binding on the company. .
In addition, it argued that according to article 21 (1) (e) and article 24 (3) of the 1992 Constitution, freedom of association was guaranteed and there is no law that establishes that every association must be registered.
In addition, he argued that the government of Ghana had agreed to pay compensation to GCNet for repealing the contract and that the compensation would include the staff dismissal package.
Decision
The arbitration panel agreed with the staff and held that GCNet must pay for the termination package listed in the Human Resources Manual because the termination package was already predetermined.
He argued that the memorandum of understanding between the Staff Association and GCNet was for the implementation of the redundancy exercise and not a negotiation of the redundancy package because that was already contained in the Human Resources Manual.
“In fact, we found that there has been no severance pay negotiation during this firing exercise,” the panel said.
The panel also rejected GCNet’s claim that it did not have the ability to pay for the severance package.
“We found that GCNet is entitled to compensation is entitled to claim compensation from the Government of Ghana and such claim will include severance pay to be made to staff,” added the panel.
[ad_2]
