An industrial tribunal chairman who awarded a man €5,700 for unfair dismissal has a history of conflict with the employer he ruled against, the company has claimed.
Tribunal chairman Antoine De Giovanni last week awarded Brian Bonnici €5,737 in damages after he found that Island Hotels had been unjustified in firing him in 2011.
Mr Bonnici was photographed washing a car while on sick leave, ostensibly suffering from back problems.
Island Hotels has now appealed against the decision, saying there is a history of bad blood between Mr De Giovanni and Island Hotels director Winston Zahra Snr, going back to when Mr DeGiovanni worked under Mr Zahra as human resources manager at the Dragonara Casino. Mr Zahra was casino chairman at the time.
Mr DeGiovanni left the casino when he reached retirement age but subsequently represented casino employees at industrial tribunal cases on several cases, leading to a deterioration in relations between himself and Mr Zahra on “both a professional and personal level,” the latter has said.
The appeal argues that Mr DeGiovanni had shown an “absolute lack of transparency” in not flagging this issue and abstaining from Mr Bonnici’s case.
“We had no idea about his history at the Dragonara casino until I sent my father a copy of the decision last week,” said Mr Zahra’s son, group CEO Winston J. Zahra.
“It’s clear Mr DeGiovanni knew exactly who the company directors were, and he should have simply sat this case out and allowed someone else to rule on it,” he told The Sunday Times.
The company is also contesting the Bonnici decision on legal grounds, saying that the ruling failed to take the entire episode into consideration and reduced it to a matter of losing trust in Mr Bonnici.
Local employment law states that only domestic workers such as house maids or carers can be fired for having lost their employer’s trust.
But Island Hotels is arguing that several factors contributed to Mr Bonnici’s dismissal, and that when combined, they made his position within the company untenable.
Mr Bonnici was employed as an assistant cost controller with the Island Hotels group. He had taken a week of sick leave in October 2011 alleging back problems, only to be photographed at a car wash by a hotel employee.
According to hotel management, Mr Bonnici had repeatedly denied having cheated on his sick leave, even when he was warned that there was documented proof implicating him.
The company has said that these repeated lies, his having abused of sick leave and having left his colleagues in the lurch close to an auditing deadline had all contributed to the company losing faith in him as an employee.
The Sunday Times was unable to make contact with Mr DeGiovanni for his comments.