Ministry intervenes in dismissal of AAJ worker
WESTERN BUREAU –The Ministry of Labour is to oversee a conciliatory meeting between the Airports Authority of Jamaica (AAJ) and its former employee, Sonia Brown, who said she was wrongfully dismissed without severance pay last October.
Several attempts to get a comment on the issue from the AAJ proved futile. But Gordon, who worked with the Authority in Montego Bay as a customer service protocol receptionist for seven years, said she was handed a dismissal letter on October 17 last year for “unauthorised absences”.
Those “unauthorised absences”, she said, were the Saturdays she refused to work because of her Seventh-Day Adventist faith, after she was refused exemption from working Saturdays.
“Before I got baptised (in 2000) I spoke with my department manager and supervisor. At that point I was already getting Fridays and Saturdays off. I spoke with them and it was okay,” she told the Observer.
“Then last June my supervisor came to me to tell me they would have to change my days off. I told him you cannot do this because you know I’m now in church and I’m very active.”
But she said he would have none of it and she decided then not to show up for work on the Saturdays she was assigned.
She paid the price for that decision.
“They insisted and left me on the roster so each time I didn’t go to work on the Saturday, when I go back they would suspend me. I got about four suspensions or so,” she said.
Then on October 11 she said top managers at the Authority, after hearing the matter, told the department to see how best it could accommodate her in light of her religious beliefs.
It was not to be.
“Maybe a week after that (on October 17) I was called by the personnel manager who gave me a dismissal letter with immediate dismissal… The letter stated that I would get all money owed to me in due course,” she said. “During the time they sent me home I got no money at all from them. They said I am not entitled to pay in lieu of notice. The only thing I got from them is my pension and vacation leave. They need to pay me…”
It is on this ground that she is claiming wrongful dismissal and she is supported by her union — the Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP).
“I went as far as to say to them just give me one day off… I told them I would come in at 6:00 pm on Saturdays… people were willing to change with me. All these options were turned down,” Gordon said.
Now following several reported attempts by the labour ministry to have a meeting with the AAJ, the July 16 date has been set for the matter to be heard by the ministry for ruling.
“We would like them (AAJ) to retract on the dismissal, acknowledge that they should not have dismissed her and made better attempts to accommodate her,” UTASP officer, Carl Miller told the Observer.
“If the ministry rules it was an unjust dismissal… they would have to compensate her for those (seven) years (she worked with the authority) plus up to the point she was dismissed. So we are hoping that the ministry will see our point that they made no effort to accommodate her…”