NLC To Go To Court
The National Labour commission (NLC) intends taking Latex Foam Rubber Company to court for not complying with its directive on a labour dispute between the company and an employee. Mr. Edward Briku-Boadi made this known to the “Times” yesterday in a telephone interview following the publication of the issue in the paper on Wednesday.
He said the NLC cannot enforce its own directives except to resort to the law courts when its attention is drawn to any violation of its directive.
Mr. Briku-Boadu explained that the dispute between Latex Foam and its worker, John Sakyi had delayed because Sakyi failed to inform the commission that the company had complied with its directive.
He said that although Section 172 of the Labour Act mandates the commission to go to court for an order to compel a party to a dispute to comply with its order, the NLC lacked the requisite personnel to handle such cases resulting resulted in a pile up of cases brought before it.
Mr. Briku-Boadi said the NLL is saddled with numerous labour disputes but, “we are doing the best we can with the little resource at our disposal”.
He said last year, petitioners, through the commission received a total of GH¢120,000 as compensation.
The “Times” on Wednesday reported that Latex Foam Rubber Products Limited had refused to comply with the directive of the NLL on the wrongful summary dismissal of one of its truck drivers for over staying his assignment to Burkina Faso, by four days.
Latex Foam Rubber Limited reacting to report, said it had enough grounds to dismiss the truck worker.
The Managing Director, Salem Narlous said investigations conducted by the Union Chairman, Eric Nyanyi at the place the truck driver professed to have fallen sick proved that the driver's story was false.
He said based on that investigation and also for the fact that the driver could have made himself available to the company's Tamale depot which was not far from the place he fell sick, showed that he did not give a fair representation of what transpired during the four days delay.
Mr. Narlous described the decision by the National Labour Commission as harsh and biased, saying “we never understood how they arrived at the decision to compensate the driver for 10 months salary for breach of contract, so we have appealed against it”.