Leeston Hotel dismissal 'unjustified'

Press, 16 July 1982, Page 20

Leeston Hotel dismissal 'unjustified'

A Leeston woman. Mrs W. G. Jellyman, has been awarded the equivalent of four weeks wages and $250 in compensation because she was unjustifiably dismissed from the Leeston Hotel in October last year.

In the reserved decision of the Arbitration Court. Mr J. B. Walton dissented from the majority decision of Chief Judge J. R. P. Horn and Mr D. Jacobs.

This case was heard in Christchurch on Junels, when Mr R. Lingard appeared for the Canterbury Hotel Worker's Union as applicant, and Mr P. J. Rutledge appeared for ..Mr R. E. and Mrs A. C. Fell, trading as the Leeston Hotel, as respondent. Mr Rutledge had submitted that as a casual worker, Mrs Jellyman had no right to compensation and that she had not been dismissed but "rostered off.” Mr Rutledge had submitted that if the Court held that she was dismissed, then it was a justified dismissal.

The Court said that the “casual worker" concept in the award “bristles with dif-

ficulty." There was nothing in the casual labour part of the award concerning dismis-, sal, but in the Court's view Mrs Jellyman was really a part-time worker on a regulor hoci'c The Court held that she was dismissed, unjustifiably. The cause of the dismissal was the behaviour of her husband on the day of the Ellesmere Show on October 17,1981. The couple had gone to the bar of .the Leeston Hotel and Mr Jellyman had made “a thorough, vigorous and noisy nuisance of himself in the bar on his wife’s behalf” because she-had been denied the opportunity of employment on Show Day. But Mrs Jellyman -had taken no effective part and the responsibility for his conduct could not be inflicted on his wife sO as to justify her dismissal, said the Court.

In his . dissenting opinion Mr Walton said that he did not see that Mrs Jellyman’s actjons could be divorced from those of her husband and she had made no attempt to apologise after the incident in the bar.