The Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT) has backed Neslte’s disciplining of employees for “Wilful Fraud” is the headline of an article in Sunday August 17’s Gleaner (http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140817/lead/lead7.html). Two employees were charged with Wilful Fraud and dismissed from the company for claiming for hours not worked. Although Nestle did not have a  definition in their service rules for Wilful Fraud, Samuda and Johnson’s Attorney at Law, Kwame Gordon who represented the company submitted  that the offence was capable of a definition and the IDT agreed with this submission. The IDT ruled that according to the Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary, ‘willful’ means actions that are done or expressed deliberately, while ‘fraud’, on the other hand, is the crime of gaining money by deceit or trickery”. In this case, though the employees did not hack into a system or handle the transfer of money directly, they deliberately manipulated a system, which is deceitful and hence falls within the definition.

Fraud is a serious offence. We are often accustomed to it when dealing with white collar criminals defrauding millions by means of cooking books, laundering or misappropriating funds.  Fraud however is not relegated to the man armed with a suit and cunning smile. With the current economic times, some of the labour force have been finding ways to extract more than their allotted salaries from their employer’s coffers and unfortunately, by dishonest means.

So clever is the fraud that wisdom has them discovering loop holes within company policy to mask or expunge them from their mal-intentions.  The case in question sees two hourly paid employees who are scheduled to work up until 10 PM, leaving earlier than 10 PM while their time cards still indicate they left at the end of their respective shifts. . To place things into perspective, one employee left work at 7:35 pm on August 25, 2012 and  at 8:35 pm on September 25, 2012 while the other employee, a union delegate left work at  8:35 pm on July 6, 2012; both receiving full pay for the day.

Based on this evidence, the company determined that the employees collected money unlawfully without any intention of returning it. The IDT however, found that the dismissal of only one employee was justified as in the case of the other the Company had breached natural justice in its disciplinary procedure. Nonetheless, the IDT was of the view that had it not been for this breach of natural justice the dismissal of the other employee would have been justified. In the circumstances the Company was required to reinstate this employee by a certain date. However, if the Company chose not to reinstate then it could compensate the employee.