Why were TTPS contract workers terminated?

THE EDITOR: Several contract employees of the TTPS have been terminated with immediate effect. The TTPS said these dismissals will have no effect on the operations and services of the police. It has also said that this was a review of staffing arrangements.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police claims the dismissal was a cost cutting exercise.

Really? A cost cutting exercise involving the dismissal of 40 or so employees?

Don’t forget the 1986-87 NAR 10 per cent pay cut and increment freeze was supposed to be a cost cutting exercise too.

Turned out it was an illegal deprivation of public employees of their incomes which the High Court ruled is their property and of which the government deprived them without due process of law (Bernadette Hood-Caesar vs the AG, HCA 3015 of 1987).

The Industrial Court also ruled that it was contrary to good industrial relations practice and an Industrial Relations Offence – PSA v ADB and others.

So, don’t get caught up in the cost cutting exercise propaganda.

The DCP also told the media: “From our advice we sought to stay within the requirements of the law in relation to termination of contracts.

The terms of the dismissed contract workers are different from the terms of the contracts of police officers and all other public officers appointed by service commissions or by the commissioner of police.

Public officers are in a particular category of employment called "permanent and pensionable" recognised as such by our High Court in the case of John Reddick v Lalla, Kenneth and the Public Service Commission H.C.A 1767/1973.

The Privy Council (our highest court) warned about summary dismissals in the seminal case of Endel Thomas v AG 1981 3WLR 601:

“At pleasure" means that the Crown servant may lawfully be dismissed summarily without there being any need for the existence of some reasonable cause for doing so….would even enable a government, composed of the leaders of the political party that happened to be in power, to dismiss all members of the public service who were not members of the ruling party and prepared to treat the proper performance of their public duties as subordinate to the furtherance of that party's political aims.

“In the case of an armed police force...the power of summary dismissal opens up the prospect of converting it into what in effect might function as a private army of the political party that had obtained a majority of the seats in Parliament at the last election...”

That does not mean that contract employees can be summarily dismissed either. They are not public officers but workers within the meaning of the Industrial Relations Act.

Were they retrenched (their functions surplus to the requirements of the organization) or dismissed in a harsh and oppressive manner?

No one's term in the Public Service provides for summary dismissal except for the most serious issues in extremely specific and serious situations. Let us deal with the issues not the excuses.

CLYDE WEATHERHEAD

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