Three weeks ago, we told you about a landmark CCJ judgment which found that a pension plan cannot displace severance payments to workers who have earned it.
The judgement was made in favour of ten former BTL employees - and now others who have left the company are also lining up to get their payments.
While the company has indicated that it will duly pay dozens of former employees - it has told others who left many years ago that by law there is a statute bar for employees who either resigned or retired from employment more than 6 (six) years ago.
That's not the position of those employees who say they have been in a continuous dialogue for years to get these payments. They are represented by former Communication Workers Union president Paul Perriot who now lives in the US. He told us via Zoom that he represented about 140 former employees who are determined to get what they are due:
Paul Perriot, Former President - BCWU
"BTL has been using now with the last response, they use the 6 year criteria where if from the ruling it was six years, then prior to that, if you left six years from that date, then you are getting the benefit."
"So some people got the benefit. 60 of the people that we represented in the letter got responses saying that they will honor the payment for them."
"But the majority of us, still 140 plus, have been told that we're out of that six year criteria, then."
"We don't believe we fall under that six year criteria because we've been asking for it continually. So we we were at the point where, we had no get a letter back in to BTL demanding that the six year does not apply to us."
"In the last letter we're giving them another week to respond to our claims that we do not fall under that tort law."
"And, there are other plans in place, within the trade union movement, we always plan, one step at a time, but we don't want it to get to where we have to be fighting with them. We'd like them to do the right thing. Which they should as a government, there's so many people again, that's involved in this claim."
We'll keep following the story.
