The Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce have been
through the gruelling process of successfully defending itself, through the
Employment Relations Authority. The case related to an ex-employee,
alleging the Chamber had failed to act in good faith and did not provide a safe
workplace. The alleged issues arose after the 22 February 2011
earthquake, when CECC staff were working from my home, in Holmwood Road
under less than ideal conditions like many other Christchurch businesses
post-earthquake.
The full summary of the ERA findings just released two years
after the alleged allegations can been seen here. Defending these allegations has been resource hungry, arduous, emotionally
taxing and expensive. While CECC has been completely exonerated
and in fact praised for a lot of the actions we took immediately post-earthquake,
we will still end up out of pocket, as a completely innocent party. A
proportion of the legal fees incurred, will remain a cost to CECC and of
course the resources we have expended defending what have been found to be
spurious allegations, can never be recovered.
There is something fundamentally wrong here, a view of which
I am sure is shared by many of our members. Why should a completely
innocent party, totally exonerated from all charges, end up with significant
costs by going through a process to prove its innocence? The easy option for
us, would have been to agree on a cash settlement, early on in the
process. As an employers’ organisation we refused to do that, because we
knew we were innocent and simply settling, to get the allegations out of the
way, was morally indefensible and bowing to the failings of an inadequate
system.
We now want to do what we can to address this
frustration. It has been the curse of employers for many years. We want
to see whether or not we can, in future, ensure full compensation of costs, for
entities who are put through a process to have to prove their innocence and
proven to be without blame. The process is flawed and it needs to be
changed. Please let me know if you share my views.
No comments:
Post a Comment