Barbados Today

The Employment Rights Act is to be reviewed, Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer-Suckoo has announced, a year after the legislation was brought into force.

She said the review has become necessary following concerns, although she did not specify what those were.

However, she assured that all stakeholders would again be involved in the process, including a tribunal that is being established to hear labour disputes.

“There are many cases before the tribunal right now and the tribunal is ready to be meeting soon. They’ve spent the last year in preparatory work, making sure that all the administrative and other arrangements have been put in place so that they can start and when they start and when they start they can move very smoothly,” Minister Byer-Suckoo announced during this morning’s launch of May Day celebrations at Solidarity House.

“There will be a review but this will happen after the tribunal has heard a lot of cases and so they can contribute and say where they find some of the weaknesses. We will not just be asking the tribunal but we will be asking all our stakeholders, including workers and workers’ representative, employers and others for their feedback on the Employment Rights Act because we know we will have to fine-tune some areas of that legislation.

“Until then it is clear that in both the public and private sector and in our parastatal agencies, the management, the workers and the advisers of both need to be made aware of all the provisions of the Act . . . and what that means in the day-to-day HR and IR practice especially since form feedback so far there have been some concerns in the areas of dismissals, redundancies and disciplinary procedures so more work need to be done in sensitisation.”

The minister said since the legislation took effect the labour department has been kept very busy fielding questions and complaints.