THE Civil Service Association (CSA) says it will be challenging the legality of several redundancies made at the Castries Constituencies Council (CCC) earlier this week.
“One of our members reported that she was handed a letter and within minutes, literally escorted off the premises by security personnel,” noted the CSA.
According to the CSA the letter made reference to the dire fiscal position of the CCC, the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and the intention to make the operations leaner and more sustainable as the justification for reviewing and restructuring its operations. It also suggested that the unions and Labour Department were informed of their intentions.
“The CSA makes it categorically clear, that we had no prior knowledge of this and contends that the letter is misleading in that regard. Further, we intend to challenge the legality of this action by the CCC, which is in breach of the procedural requirements of the Labour Act,” noted the trade union in a missive to media houses.
The CSA, stated it was suspicious about the timing of this matter, which was executed on the day of departure of the outgoing Mayor of Castries, Peterson Francis.
“Was this an act of victimization on the part of the outgoing Mayor? Why did the CCC choose to make such an inaccurate statement in an effort to justify its actions?” stated the CSA.
The CSA noted that in recent times, the CCC has had several breaches of the Labour Act in its industrial relations practices which were successfully challenged by the CSA and resulted in significant costs being awarded to the affected persons.
The CSA further stated that it is aware that the CCC was involved in some e-traordinary expenditure on projects which was the subject of an internal probe and therefore believes that its financial problems may not necessarily be as a result of the number of staff.
The CSA calls for the intervention of the Department of Labour, the incoming Mayor and other interested parties to take immediate action to reverse this unfortunate situation.