Vested interests scuttle important amendment to Industrial Disputes Act-Union
View(s):The employer lobby with the support of ‘yellow’ (conspiring) unions that serve vested interests seems to have scuttled the passage into law of an important amendment to the Industrial Disputes Act requiring employers to follow a domestic inquiry process prior to terminating the services of a workman, the Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL) claimed this week.
In a statement it said the employer group had no qualms about agreeing to the preliminary draft of the amendment presented to the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC) in 2020 as it was at that time weighted in favour of employers. The CFL submitted its observations to the then Minister of Labour on 28th January 2021 with copies to the NLAC stating inter alia that the then draft proposals -
(a) bestowed on employers, rights they did not enjoy at present
(b) denied natural justice to affected employees, and
(c) not only failed to take into consideration the interpretations of renowned authorities but also contravened determinations of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka
The latest draft circulated at the NLAC meeting held on May 5 is an improvement on the earlier draft as it contains many of the suggestions made by the CFL and is in accordance with ILO principles concerning security of employment and with judgments delivered by the SL Supreme Court regarding worker entitlements during periods of suspension from work. The misconceived position of some unions in rejecting the draft outright amounts to playing into the hands of the employers in preserving their prerogative to summarily dismiss employees.
Given the blatant unequal employer-employee relationship at workplace level found in Sri Lanka today, a move by the state to mitigate the imbalance in some form or the other is to be welcomed. It is in this backdrop that the CFL favourably views the proposed amendment to the ID Act introducing statutory provisions to hold domestic inquiries prior to deciding on terminating an employee’s services.
“Termination is an extra judicial function of the employer. Unlike in India, we have no statutory requirement necessitating the holding of domestic inquiries prior to dismissal unless collective agreements or the contract of employment provides for it. We believe it would be useful to hold such inquiries both in the interests of the employee and the employer. In the absence of such procedures, an employer may terminate an employee at the very first opportunity when he feels even capriciously that the employee has committed some wrong, irrespective of the degree or gravity of the offence. The result would be that the employee would lose his job and his means of livelihood for the long time it normally takes for him to be granted relief by an industrial court or labour tribunal. If the employer does not issue a discharge certificate, the dismissed employee’s chances of securing other employment is very remote. From a social angle, this is bad and an unacceptable practice,” the CFL said.
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