DIANA MAHABIR-WYATT
A recent dispute brought to court by the Government and Industrial Workers Union focused on a question that has often puzzled most industrial-relations stakeholders over the years. It is not caused by conflicting interests as usual - although there is that as well - but, I respectfully submit, by the act itself.
Let me start at the beginning.
A young man joined the union that represented the workers in the company he worked for. His position - manager, information technology - was an important one, and his expertise in IT needed by the company, as it is by most organisations.
If you are involved in industrial relations at all, you will be aware that it is not up to the executive director or the CEO these days to determine the status of an employee, to decide whether they are a 'worker' or a 'manager.' That determination is made, where it is in question, by the Registration, Recognition and Certification Board (RRCB).
People have forgotten that as the board was not constituted by government for a number of years companies just went ahead and attended to that themselves.
In this case, the union wanted to have the IT man included in the bargaining unit, but the company did not want him there, presumably because the IT person within the organisation is privy to its private and confidential information.
They claimed exclusion because he was a manager (it was in his job title). So the union went to the now (thankfully) reconstituted Recognition Board to ask for his job title to be varied into the existing bargaining unit. The board said he could be included and was prepared to vary the existing bargaining unit to include him.
This is not an unfamiliar or unique disputed area. What is significant, however, are the implications attached.
In this case, as it turned out, excluding an IT manager from the bargaining unit did not mean he is or is not a manager; nor does the title given to him by his employer.
Some employers call all professionals "managers" because the prestige of the title means more to them than the salary itself.
The IT manager title is given to an employee who may be a worker under the criteria set out by common law or the criteria used by the RRCB, but excluded from a bargaining unit because his 'community of interest' or even his 'periodicity of payment' would more reasonably place him in a different bargaining unit. There is an assumption that the mere exclusion implies that he is not a worker, but this assumption is wrong.
Many years ago there was a company called Trinidad Meat Processors in which all employees were union members, including managers, but excluding the general manager.
The Industrial Relations Act does not define the word 'manager'; indeed, it never uses the word. But it does state who is excluded from the word 'worker.' When the act was passed over 50 years ago, the exclusions included: 'a person who in the opinion of the board - (i) is responsible for
