Procedural errors in retrenchments haunt Edcon
- Published on 4 Sep 2015
- HR Pulse News Desk
Retrenchments by clothing retailer Edcon between 2013 and 2014 have come back to haunt the company.
About 3,000 employees were let go between April 2013 and last year in a process allegedly riddled with procedural errors. Now its ex-workers are demanding that the firm must pay for its mistakes. Of the retrenched workers, 1,331 are taking the company to court claiming their dismissals for operational reasons were invalid and demanding to be reinstated with full back pay. The workers say the company failed to comply with the Labour Relations Act (LRA) by referring their retrenchments for operational reasons to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and did not wait the required time before issuing notices terminating contracts.
The matter will be heard next Tuesday in the Constitutional Court. The workers are appealing a March 2015 Labour Appeal Court (LAC) judgment which found that the failure to comply with the sections of the LRA did not lead to invalid dismissals. The judges made that ruling despite two previous LAC judgments having made the opposite finding. “If an employer who retrenches a large number of employees is not aware of the law as it stands, it has only itself to blame,” say the workers in their court papers. Edcon says the workers are capitalising on its mistake by not complying with the LRA and want the appeal thrown out.
Source: SA Labour News
