Employee's 'redundancy' declared irregular

A company has been ordered to pay a former employee Lm800 compensation after an industrial tribunal ruled it did not have good and sufficient reasons to terminate his employment.

The tribunal, chaired by George Borg Cardona, gave the ruling in the case of Sandro Dimech against Palm Travel & Shipping Limited.

Dimech claimed he was assigned a less taxing job following an injury at work, which was a result of negligence on the company's part. But, as time went by, he was assigned jobs that were too tiring for him and when he asked not to be assigned such jobs, his superiors started picking on him until finally he was fired.

The company however claimed that Dimech had been fired for redundancy purposes because Palm Enterprises Limited had financial problems.

The tribunal noted that, apart from delivering goods, Dimech also carried out other jobs within the company and, therefore, since Dimech had been hurt on the job, his employer should have provided him with an alternative.

The tribunal also noted that Dimech's FS3 form and other documents showed that he was an employee of Palm Travel & Shipping Limited and not of Palm Enterprises Limited.

For this reason, Dimech could not be declared redundant from Palm Travel & Shipping Limited just because Palm Enterprises Limited was in financial trouble.

It was the company's responsibility to ensure that employees were registered correctly, the tribunal added.

The tribunal ruled that the company did not have good and sufficient reasons to terminate Dimech's employment.

Daniela Borg represented Dimech and Christian Grima assisted Simon Bajada who represented the company.