Chairman of the Employment Rights Tribunal (ERT) retired Justice Christopher Blackman has blasted some lawyers for their lethargy which has delayed the work of the ERT.
However, Justice Blackman has given the assurance that the unavailability of those lawyers had not stopped the tribunal’s work , which has centred around case management.
He told Barbados TODAY the tribunal had been meeting via Zoom, hearing matters as recently as this week.
But he complained that certain attorneys were stalling the progress.
“A lot of cases are being done currently by what you call being case managed. The hearings we’ve tried to have, the lawyers for the parties say they are going on holiday and hopefully we will have some hearings either at the end of the month or into September.
“We have quite a few down for hearing in September but that’s the challenge. We’ve been waiting to get the lawyers on board because a lot of the lawyers are playing the fool in terms of their availability. But I have one decision outstanding which I am halfway through writing which I hope to hand down.
“The fact that you haven’t heard anything doesn’t mean that things haven’t happened, but we haven’t been having a lot of public hearings for want of the action of the lawyers,” Justice Blackman explained.
He revealed that one matter which he hoped to hear soon was the highly-publicised case involving former general secretary of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Roslyn Smith.
Smith, who served in the post before being retired by the NUPW on March 31, 2019, is alleging that she was unfairly dismissed and is claiming close to $500 000 in compensation.
Justice Blackman said while Smith’s case was a fairly recent one, he was using a system of balancing current cases with older ones.
He pointed out that several persons who had matters before the ERT had not shown any further interest.
“A while ago we had to publish a notice in the paper saying that if certain things didn’t happen a lot of cases would be thrown out because people filed and they took no action to pursue their matter. When that publication occurred a lot of people then came out of the woodwork and said they wanted to take it forward, so some of those cases have been engaging our attention this year, 2014 and 2015 matters,” Justice Blackman said.
“On the other hand I have also been doing what I call a two-pronged approach. So, recent cases which are recent filings including that of the former general secretary of the NUPW, her matter is currently before the tribunal and hopefully will be heard in September or October.
“I don’t think it makes sense saying that she is last or was a relatively recent matter and put hers back because in that case everything will become old and backlogged. I’ve taken an approach of doing some matters that are current and doing some that are old. Eventually we will meet somewhere in the middle.”
Justice Blackman also lamented the understaffing of the ERT saying that the small staff complement meant the ERT was not able to perform efficiently and effectively.
