Court Reinforces Workers’ Rights Under Labor Act

So, what does this mean? If you’ve worked for more than ten years and leave under mandatory or voluntary retirement, you’re entitled to severance, period. The CCJ’s judgment reinforces that Belize’s Labor Act is social justice legislation designed to protect workers, not employers’ bottom lines. BTL must now pay up, with costs awarded to the appellants.

 

Eamon Courtenay, SC, Attorney-at-law

“Well, I think the first point is that a pension plan cannot displace severance. If you move to a pension scheme, the pension scheme must also account for the severance benefits that an employee is entitled to. So, for example, we have to remember that you earn your severance by service, by working with an employer. When it comes to pension, pension is an agreement between the employer and the employee that, in most pension schemes, the employee and the employer will contribute and at retirement, or at some stated date, the employee gets an amount of money. On the other hand, under severance, you earn your severance by working, not by making payments. So that in this particular case what happened was that in 1994-95, BTL was advised that you no longer needed to pay severance because you are paying a pension. They paid all the existing employees the amount of severance that had accrued up until then. And then, since then, they stopped accruing severance payments and paid people only their pension benefits when they retired from the company.”