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The Managing Director of Barclays Bank Ghana, Mrs Margaret Mwanakatwe and Laureen Lokko, Human Resource Business Partner of the bank, were yesterday acquitted and discharged by an Accra Fast Track High Court of contempt charges. |
Eight employees of the bank cited the two persons for contempt, for disobeying the orders of the court.
The employees, all executive members of the local branch of Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), are Opare Yeboah, Samuel A. Anarwat, Esther Asiedu Larbi and Angela Deku.
The rest are Gariba A. Andan, Edward Boakye, Thomas Benjamin Quainoo and Matthew Kotoku.
The plaintiffs are, in a substantive case, contesting a decision by the management of the bank to introduce a new policy called "out-of-cycle", which makes it mandatory for a worker, promoted to a higher position, to perform his/her new function without compensation until confirmed by an external body after a year.
The policy, the plaintiffs contend, is in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and not in the interest of the workers.
While the case was pending in court, the management of the bank allegedly dismissed the entire executives of the union on February 26, leading to the filing of the contempt suit against the two.
Mr Albert Adaare, counsel for the plaintiffs, in moving the motion for contempt on March 10, described as unlawful the decision taken by the bank not to allow the plaintiffs to enter their offices.
"It is unlawful for the bank to go ahead to summarily dismiss the employees, because such dismissal can only be justified if they commit very serious offences and not when they oppose a draconian policy of the bank," he stated.
But in his reply, Mr Charles Hayibor, counsel for the bank, dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim that his clients had prevented the employees from entering their offices, saying that their salaries for January and February 2008 had been paid.
Mr Hayibor said it was rather the plaintiffs who refused to sit down with management to discuss the CBA.
Absolving them of contempt of court, Justice Victor Ofoe, now with the Court of Appeal, said the plaintiffs could not establish beyond reasonable doubt that the defendants were in contempt.
"The information provided by the plaintiffs does not show that there has been any withholding of their salaries as they claimed".
The court said since contempt of court is a quasi criminal offence with its implications being imprisonment, there was the need for the plaintiffs to establish beyond reasonable doubt a case against them.
Justice Ofoe later advised the parties to take advantage of the CBA to resolve their differences and ordered the bank to immediately file their defence for the substantive case to take its normal course. |
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