Cape Town - A regional sales manager who was unfairly dismissed from his position – as found by the CCMA – is again victorious after the Labour Court dismissed his employer’s application to set the arbitrator’s decision aside.
Robert Greyling had worked for Trudon (Pty) Ltd and after being unfairly dismissed, won an arbitration award at the CCMA ordering his reinstatement and back pay totalling R1.162 million.
Trudon, publishers of the Yellow Pages phone directory, had approached the Labour Court to have the CCMA’s decision reviewed and set aside.
According to court documents, in June 2018, Greyling was hauled before a disciplinary hearing on charges of dishonesty and bringing the company’s name into disrepute for taking invoices for advertising against a contract concluded between Trudon and Eskom after being told not to do so due to the power supplier’s financial instability at the time.
Labour Court Judge André van Niekerk said: “The essence of the charges against the employee was that he had put through charges against the contract in September 2016, notwithstanding the verbal request for cancellation from Eskom, thus causing the applicant economic loss in an amount of some R2.5 million ...
“For present purposes, it was not disputed that Eskom entered into a contract with the applicant, for a period of five years, in which it offered Eskom advertisements in its white and yellow pages.
“The employee was dismissed in circumstances where he continued to debit Eskom in terms of a five-year fixed-term contract, which Eskom contended had been ‘put on hold’ in terms of instruction issued at a meeting held on April 11, 2016, at which the employee was present.
“The applicant contends that Eskom agreed to honour invoices for advertisements already placed as at April 11, 2016, but not thereafter. The applicant claims that during 2017, (Eskom’s then-general manager for strategic marketing and branding) discovered that Eskom was still being billed on the same contract and as a result, disciplinary action was instituted against the employee and (another employee),” Van Niekerk said in judgment before dismissing the application with costs.
The contract was to be put on hold without cancelling it until Eskom’s financial situation improved, whereafter the contract could be reinstated without having to put the contract out to tender.
However, Greyling denied that at a specific meeting which was held, he was instructed to place the contract on hold. During arbitration proceedings, a colleague of Greyling confirmed his version and was adamant that such an instruction had not been given and further evidence, found by the arbitrator, showed that the contract had not made any provision to “pulse” the contract and such instruction was not reduced to writing.
Cape Times