The Industrial Court has thrown out an application seeking to have contempt proceedings against Public Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke dismissed over a lack of evidence. Dismissing the no-case submission yesterday, the court’s president, Deborah Thomas-Felix, said Duke, his union and immigration officer Purdy Babwah all had a case to answer for allegedly breaching a three-week-old injunction preventing staff at the Immigration Division from engaging in industrial action. “It is our ruling that a case has been made out against them and it is for them to now respond,” Thomas-Felix said.
After the ruling Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes, who presented the application on behalf of the union, informed the court he needed time to consider if he would be calling witnesses or if his clients would agree to testify in their defence. Although Thomas-Felix had previously said she wished to complete the case before the start of court’s annual summer vacation next Monday, because of Mendes’s request, she was forced to adjourn the case to October 1. Before the decision, Russell Martineau, SC, representing Labour Minister Errol Mc Leod, made lengthy submissions in response to Mendes’s claim that there was insufficient evidence before the court to convict his clients.
While he accepted that there was no direct evidence that Duke incited the workers to abstain from work on July 7 and 8, Martineau submitted the court was entitled to infer that he did so from his public statements on the issue which were heard by members of staff. “People who came to work the day before stopped coming after Duke made the statement. Is this by sheer coincidence or accident?” Martineau asked. He criticised the union’s defence that its actions did not contravene the injunction as refusing to work under hazardous health and safety conditions was exempted from the definition of industrial action under industrial relations legislation.
“It is not for Duke to say or assume it was not industrial action. They can not continue in the same conduct as they did before the injunction was granted,” Martineau said as he suggested that the union should have applied to the court for a variation of the injunction before its members continued to refused to work over the health and safety conditions. While he admitted that the department’s Frederick Street office was not fully compliant with occupational health and safety requirements, he said there was no imminent and serious danger which would entitle the union to its defence.