Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) will have to abide by the salary structure ordered by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal on August 29, 2003, for clerical and hourly-paid workers.

This is as a result of a Court of Appeal ruling yesterday in favour of the National Workers' Union (NWU) and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union which represent the workers.

"This is a big triumph for the workers and the unions," Clive Dobson, former president of the NWU, said yesterday. He sai it was the company's right to go to the United Kingdom Privy Council, he hoped the company would not bother to do so. Mr. Dobson pointed out that the case had been going on since the 1990s.

Policy agreement

The tribunal had ruled that the job evaluation and compensation review exercise was one which conformed with the policy agreement by the parties in the 1990 Heads of Agreement. The agreement was based on a formula of the top five to 10 percentile of the benchmark market.

The tribunal, in settling the dispute between the parties, had ruled that the effective date of payment of the new rates should be January 1, 2001.

JPS appealed

The JPS took the case to the Judicial Review Court and Mr. Justice Donald McIntosh dismissed the motion. The JPS appealed the ruling and the Court of Appeal comprising Justices Seymour Panton, Howard Cooke and Zaila McCalla, heard the appeal and dismissed it.

Lord Anthony Gifford, Q.C. and Candis Craig, who represented the NWU, and attorney-at-law Curtis Cochrane, who represented the tribunal, had argued that the tribunal's award should not be set aside because there was no error in law.