CoA Reverses Favourable Teacher Trade Union Ruling

Goitsemodimo Kaelo | Monday February 5, 2018 12:16

 

The court had decided that the implementation of the Levels of Operation (LOO), especially at primary schools was unfair on senior teachers with responsibilities.

The State had appealed judgement by Justice Godfrey Ntlhomiwa of the Lobatse High Court, who ruled that the primary schools’ senior teachers with responsibilities must have benefit from the policy and that the teachers be compensated accordingly and retrospectively, from the date of the implementation of the LOO policy in July 2013. 

Ntlhomiwa had said that the implementation of the LOO policy, especially at primary schools was unfair on senior teachers with responsibilities. The implementation of the policy in 2013 had lumped the senior teachers with responsibilities at the same scale as their juniors at C1, whereas their counterparts at secondary schools had been remunerated at D4 salary scale.

However, COA Judge President Ian Kirby has set aside the decision of the High Court that had awarded the primary school senior teachers success. Acting Justices Craig Howie and Singh Walia concurred with Kirby that the respondents failed to establish any factual basis for regarding teachers in question as doing work equal to that performed by senior teachers in secondary schools.

The justices also stated that the conclusions reached by the High Court that the requirement of job evaluation assessments was unfair, arbitrary, capricious, irrational, the product of bad faith bargaining and a failure to recognise the principle of equal pay for equal work, were not justified when the evidence is assessed. “As regards equal pay for equal work, the authorities were alive to the reason why the teachers in question claimed to be deserving of remuneration on scale D4 and that the authorities proposed measures to deal with that situation but the respondents refused to participate in their implementation,” Kirby in his judgment said.

Kirby said the issue of legitimate expectation on the side of teachers is thrown into doubt by reason of the absence of any mention of it in the statutory notification of this litigation which the respondents’ attorneys conveyed in a letter dated October 16, 2015 to the appellants.

“Even if they had such an expectation viewed, that is not enough. To be a legitimate expectation it had to be a reasonable expectation and there the test is objective.

I can find no tenable basis for holding that any of the factors stressed by the respondents, taken singly or together, prove the necessary reasonable expectation. It follows that a legitimate expectation was not shown,” he added. He said none of the factors referred to have been shown to constitute or amount to a promise or undertaking to pay the teachers in question at level D4 or to treat them at the same level as a secondary school senior teacher I.

Moreover, Kirby said the press releases, which the respondents relied on, contain nothing, which can be interpreted as placing the teachers in question at a par with a secondary school senior teacher I. He said the guidelines demonstrate that level D4 is for secondary school senior teachers I, not senior teachers II.