A court has ordered the General Workers’ Union to pay its former secretary of the union’s services and media section €21,702.14 plus interest payable from December 12, 2008 until payment is affected.
Karmenu VellaKarmenu Vella, resigned from the union in September 2006 due to disagreement with the union’s central administration.
In his resignation letter, Mr Vella had publicly declared that what the GWU preached should not be done by employers was being done by itself with its officials and employees.
Mr Vella claimed that according to a memorandum of understanding dated September 1999 and which regulated the conditions of work of GWU officials such as himself, secretaries who terminated their job from the GWU were entitled to €5,104.14 or the equivalent of their final three months’ wages.
Mr Vella also claimed €16,598, the equivalent of his unused vacation leave.
The union had requested the court not to hear the case, which, it argued, should have been lodged with the Industrial Tribunal.
But the Court of Appeal declared that the tribunal's exclusive jurisdiction was just in certain cases of alleged unfair dismissal and ordered the case to continue.