A financial controller won €34,000 damages after he was unfairly dismissed by an insurance firm five years ago.
Terminating an employment should not be that simple
Mario Spiteri also served as company secretary of Gasan Mamo Insurance Limited when he was fired by the company, which accused him of lack of commitment because of a part-time job he was also doing.
The Industrial Tribunal ruled that while it was reasonable for a company to demand the employees’ full commitment, in this case, the firm had decided to terminate Mr Spiteri’s employment too lightly. It also noted that accusations of lack of commitment had to be corroborated by serious charges of negligence.
Mr Spiteri had joined the company in May 1997 as a financial controller and company secretary and was promoted to general manager finance and treasury/company secretary in 2004. About two years later, the company felt that he was not giving his 100 per cent, possibly because of a commercial activity he had started with a friend.
In fact, in 2008, Mr Spiteri had set up an estate agency, Sicily Farmhouses Limited.
Gasan Mamo complained that he was spending too much time away from the office and usually took Fridays and Mondays off to travel to Sicily.
The company told the Industrial Tribunal that Mr Spiteri had not sought its permission to set up his business. It later emerged, however, that two Gasan Mamo directors had utilised the services of Mr Spiteri’s company.
The tribunal noted that the company never told Mr Spiteri to stop his part-time job and neither was he given the choice to either run his business or work at Gasan Mamo.
In June 2008, he was informed that the board of directors was “slowly, slowly” losing trust in him.
In November of that same year he was informed by chairman Joe Gasan that his position had become “untenable”.
Mr Gasan told him that the part-time job was not allowing him to concentrate on his main job and that, “as a result”, his employment was being terminated as of December 1, 2008.
Talks on a severance payment and a golden handshake failed and Mr Spiteri resorted to the Industrial Tribunal claiming unfair dismissal.
Several company directors told the Industrial Tribunal that they noticed Mr Spiteri’s commitment towards Gasan Mamo deteriorate because of his part-time job, further exacerbated by his position at the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry. Other complaints were about the quality of the minutes he took of management meetings and about the fact that he did not use a computerised appointment system, among others.
Managing director Albert Mamo said that Mr Spiteri’s work had deteriorated so much that, in 2007, PriceWaterhouseCoopers were sub-contracted to take over the company’s accounts.
However, these issues were not taken into consideration when the tribunal was making its final considerations.
The tribunal, chaired by Charles Cassar, said that commitment and trust were a fundamental requisite for an employer, especially when one occupied an office in a higher grade.
It said it had been proven that the level of commitment was “satisfactory” but, according to the directors, this had deteriorated over the years.
However, the tribunal chairman continued, unless a company’s conviction about an employee’s waning commitment was corroborated by serious charges of negligence, terminating an employment should not be that simple.
Against this background, the tribunal deemed Mr Spiteri’s dismissal as having been unfair.