The Industrial Disputes Tribunal, IDT, has ordered the Jamaica Urban Transit Company, JUTC, to stop deducting money from workers’ salaries for alleged arrears.
It has also barred the University and Allied Workers’ Union, UAWU, from taking industrial action while it hears the dispute surrounding the overpayment of salaries to some JUTC workers.
Chevon Campbell tells us more.
The order, numbered IDT 17-2026, was signed on Wednesday, August 26. It has two parts.
The first directs the Jamaica Urban Transit Company, JUTC, to refrain from making any salary deductions in respect of what the order describes as alleged advance payments against arrears. That direction stands until the Tribunal determines the matter.
The second addresses the workers. The Tribunal says it is satisfied that industrial action has been threatened in contemplation or furtherance of the dispute.
It orders that such action shall not take place while the matter is being heard and that if it has already begun, it must cease with immediate effect, with normality restored and maintained.
The dispute came to the IDT on referral from the Minister of Labour and Social Security, under the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act.
The order also records that the two sides have not agreed on the Terms of Reference which question the Tribunal is being asked to determine.
The JUTC and the University and Allied Workers’ Union, UAWU, have jointly drafted a proposed set of terms, which go to the Minister of Labour for his consideration.
No hearing date is set out in the document.
It is signed by chairman Donald Roberts and members Errol Beckford and Dr. Denese Morrison. It was witnessed by the Secretary for the Division, Royette Creary.
The order follows a similar one issued by the Tribunal a day earlier, in a separate dispute in the health sector.
There, the South East Regional Health Authority and the Ministry of Health and Wellness had moved to recover close to two-hundred-million dollars in alleged overpayments from the salaries of government medical consultants.
The consultants had signalled industrial action.
In that matter, as in this one, the Tribunal ordered that the deductions not proceed and that the threatened action not take place while it hears the case.
That dispute is set for hearing on September 2.
