Fate of GHAPOHA's casuals undecided: Appeal Court defers judgement

By William Yaw Owusu

Saturday, March 31, 2007
THE Court of Appeal will on April 20, decide whether or not to affirm a Tema High Court order to the Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority (GHAPOHA) to pay severance awards to its former casual workers numbering 4,195.

The Appeal Court could not deliver its judgment yesterday as scheduled because the panel wanted to get copies of the authorities cited by both counsel for GHAPOHA and the ex-workers.

It was the second time the court had deferred judgment in the case.

On March 23, the court could not deliver its judgment because, GHAPOHA, the appellants, had filed an additional application in response to the statement of case filed by the ex-workers.

On July 11, 2003, the retrenched workers filed the suit at the high court against GHAPOHA seeking damages for breach of the provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and asked the court to award compensation for maintaining them as casual workers in violation of their economic rights under the Constitution.

They also sought an order that compensation packages payable for severance of permanent employees be paid to them and an interest on all sums at the bank rate from October 1, 2002 to the date of judgment.

The court on January 18, last year, entered judgement in favour of the ex-workers, and ordered GHAPOHA to pay ¢5 million to each ex-worker for breach of the collective bargaining agreement and ¢10 million to each for each year of service “after the expiration of 154 continuous working days,” for keeping them as casual workers.

Furthermore, the court ordered the company to pay severance awards comprising three months salary for each year of service, ¢3 million in lieu of rent, ¢2 million as medicals, two bags of rice, two gallons of oil, ¢1.5 million conveyance fees, bonus for 2001 five months salary as handshake, interest from October 2001, and ¢10 million as cost.

GHAPOHA appealed against the court’s decision on the grounds that “the trial judge gave judgement for 3,839 workers plus a further 356 plaintiffs as if they were parties to the action, although the record of proceedings and relevant rules of the court established that they were not.”

The Authority argued that the trial judge’s finding that the company acted illegally and unlawfully in treating the ex-workers as non-permanent employees was erroneous since there was no evidence on record of the period of employment of each plaintiff.

“There is no evidence that any of the plaintiffs had worked satisfactorily for 154 days in any year to qualify for upgrading as permanent employees or to warrant the finding of the trial judge that GHAPOHA breached the collective bargaining agreement.