Written by Ivan Israelstam, Chief Executive of Labour Law Management Consulting.
It is not only corporate employers that mess up their disciplinary, labour relations and performance correction procedures. We have been asked to assist in more and more cases where academic institutions have breached labour law and have ignored their own policies.
Only after having been taken to task do they seek expert labour advice. It is understandable that academic institutions do not always have the budget to hire labour law experts. However, it is wiser for them to do so before making errors than to have to go to the much greater cost of hiring such expertise after their errors land them at the CCMA. The type of errors made by academic institutions include:
- Poor investigation of alleged offences
- Unfair discipline due to insufficient proof and serious breaches of disciplinary procedure
- Unfair promotion and demotion practices
- Grossly insensitive handling of staff-related problems
The example that I wish to discuss has not reached arbitration stage as yet. I will therefore not mention the names of the parties.
Academic institution A investigated a senior administrator, named N for five alleged breaches of institutional procedure dealt with in the institution’s guidelines. As the allegations were serious the investigation was carried out by another senior member of management named W who alleged that, as a result of the five infractions, N had incurred substantial costs for institution A.
However, at his disciplinary hearing N was able to bring proof of the fact that he was not guilty of any of the five infractions. After all evidence was presented N was found not guilty. The facts brought by N to clear his name had all been freely available at all times to W, the investigator. Before the hearing N had in fact submitted a detailed, written explanation of the true facts of the case. Despite having access to the facts before the disciplinary hearing W nevertheless failed to look at or consider them. W therefore not only ended up with a red face at the hearing but in fact incurred, for the academic institution, a great deal of unnecessary cost. The investigator was therefore guilty of the very offence she had erroneously brought against N! This would have been avoided had the institution spent a small amount of money training its officials in how to conduct investigations properly.
Academic institutions are in the public eye because of the crucially important role they play and because most are funded via our taxes. They therefore need to avoid unnecessary costs and to ensure that their reputations are not damaged due to actions of senior officials uneducated in the science of labour law management.
They can only achieve this by proactively utilising the expertise of labour law specialists versed in the practice (rather than just the theory) of labour legislation.
Details:
To attend our 23 October 2015 seminar in Johannesburg on HOW TO WIN AT THE CCMA please contact Ronni via 0845217492 or ronni@labourlawadvice.co.za.
