Keynote Address by
Her Honour Mrs. Heather Seale
President, Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago
Adopting Strong HR Policies that are consistent with Recent Judgments: A Roadmap for Employers
at the
Employers Solution Centre’s Seminar
on
LANDMARK COURT JUDGMENTS:
“Translating Precedent into Better Workplace Practice”
Introduction
Permit me to start my address by quoting from two judgments which speak to the mandate of the Industrial Court. In the first decision, Rees JA in Civil Appeal No. 30 of 1972, Caribbean Printers Ltd. v. the Union of Commercial and Industrial Workers1, in discussing the Industrial Court’s mandate said: ‐
“The Court is under an obligation to pay due regard to the principles and practices
of good industrial relations which have been aptly described as those informal,
uncodified understandings which are ancient habits of dealing adopted by trade
unions and acquiesced in or agreed to by employers…”
Simply put, as he himself said, the Court must look to what is right, fair and just as between man and man.
In the second judgment, first President of the Industrial Court, Sir Isaac Hyatali in Civil Appeal No. 53 of 1976, Texaco Trinidad Inc. v. Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union said this of these principles which the Court is enjoined to apply in the resolution of all trade disputes before it:‐
“…It follows that both employers and trade unions are not only obliged to observe
and these principles in all their dealings with each other but must be prepared to
accept that any position taken up by any of them in breach thereof may well be
condemned by the Court as unreasonable.”
From those two quotations, it may be clear that what the Court is required to adjudicate upon really are practices that are borne out of our everyday dealings. These include principles of fairness, abiding by the rule of natural justice and being given an opportunity to mitigate.