Durban - A municipal employee, who had more than 20 years of service, lost his job unfairly but cannot be reinstated because of his alleged bad attitude towards the following of specific instructions.
This was the recent ruling by Durban Labour Court Judge Benita Whitcher.
Aboobaker Dawood, who worked as a faults man in the city’s electricity department, was fired in 2010 for gross insubordination for failing to fill in documents for a new system that had been introduced.
The document, introduced to staff in June 2009, was to assist with an outage management system, a new technology that the city had adopted.
Attorney Elco Geldenhuys, of TMJ attorneys, said yesterday that he was acting for the South African Municipal Workers Union on behalf of Dawood and that he had been instructed to apply for leave to appeal against the judgment.
Judge Whitcher had found that Dawood’s actions were a “wilful and serious refusal” to follow instructions and he had also challenged his manager’s authority.
According to evidence in the matter, instead of filling in the new forms, Dawood completed the documents in the old format.
He challenged his dismissal on the grounds that two other workers who had not filled in the forms were not disciplined.
The two other men had also filled in the documents in the old format.
One had even continued with the practice after Dawood had been suspended in March 2010, he said.
Other employees also refused to fill in the forms after they were first introduced, but they later complied.
The arbitrator found that his dismissal had been unfair because the two other employees had not been disciplined.
The arbitrator awarded compensation equivalent to his salary for six months but refused an application for reinstatement.
The union and Dawood took the matter on review and argued that he should be reinstated retrospectively as he had not committed an act of gross insubordination.
The municipality had said that he could not get his job back because his relationship with his employers had broken down.
In her ruling, Judge Whitcher agreed with the commissioner’s decision about his reinstatement.
She found that for six months in 2009, Dawood had been instructed to fill in the new documents, but he had not.
In October 2009, he received a verbal warning.
The following month he was called to two meetings at which he was again instructed to fill in new forms and warned that he would be disciplined.
The judge said one manager had said at the arbitration that Dawood had been rude, belligerent and disrespectful during one of the meetings and had challenged them to do what they wanted.
Judge Whitcher also said that two of his managers had said they could no longer work with him.
She said the case was different from those of the two other workers who had not been disciplined for the same offence as their actions had been sporadic.
The Mercury
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