Hotel must pay

Luxury hotel Sandy Lane has been ordered to pay former employee Alicia Cheltenham more than $33,000 in compensation.

The ruling was handed down this afternoon by the Employment Rights Tribunal (ERT) which found that Cheltenham had been unfairly dismissed from her position as Human Resource Vice President for Compensation and Benefits in July 2016.

Delivering the verdict on behalf of the three-person tribunal, Deputy Chair of the ERT Kathy Ann Hamblin asked the claimant whether she wanted to be reinstated or re-engaged with the well-known West Coast hotel.

Cheltenham said she preferred to part ways with the establishment where she had worked for seven and a half years before her dismissal.

Hamblin outlined that the claimant would receive “an aggregate of a basic award of two and a half weeks pay for each completed year of service, as well as compensation for travel, entertainment and medical allowances for a period of three months assuming that those are the allowances to which she was entitled.

The basic award totalled $33,276.96 to which the allowances would be added. In addition to those sums, the claimant is entitled in accordance with section 22 subsection three of the Act, to one month’s pay being the sum of $8,240.”

Hamblin stated the payment would be due within 28 days of the ERT’s receipt of the claimant’s salary information. This is to be provided within seven weeks.

During the hearing, the panel heard that Cheltenham was dismissed in July 2016 for “gross misconduct”. The claim alleged that she gave erroneous information to a head of department, copied an email to a junior member of staff, thereby exposing the hotel to damages and she failed to follow instructions from a senior member of management without proper reason.

Hamblin outlined that not enough evidence had supported these allegations.

“The tribunal is of the view that the respondents email policy, of which could and did result in summary dismissal, ought to have been reduced to writing in clear and unequivocal terms, whether as an addendum to the respondent’s rules of the game or to the contract of employment or in some other formal document in which the payment was privy, specifying the gravity of a breach and the consequences of non-compliance…

“There is no evidence that the claimant in this case categorically refused to carry out the instructions of her superior.

“Secondly, no evidence was presented at a tribunal to show that the respondent did any investigation into allegations of misconduct by the claimant.” Counsel submitted that there were no relevant witnesses to be considered and no further evidence was needed than the email that led to the charge’…

“Thirdly, the tribunal finds that the procedure followed was not fair. While the respondents complied for the most part with part B, the claimant was not provided with any of the statements made against her, nor was she afforded the opportunity to cross-examine the makers of those statements,” the deputy chairman outlined.

In addition, the tribunal pointed out that failure to copy an email to a manager in the circumstances was not grounds for gross misconduct and it was “abundantly clear” the hotel had not lost all confidence in the claimant as months passed between Cheltenham’s disciplinary hearing in April 2016 and her dismissal during which she was still conducting the same duties, including sending emails.

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb