Why Labour Appeal Court found forWoolies
Retailer Woolworths successfully appealed against an earlier finding that firing a cashier for having R628 extra in her till was too harsh a sanction. The Labour Appeal Court last month found in favour of the company.
The case dates back to 2010 when the cashier was hauled up on a charge of misconduct because of the extra cash in her float.
The court had heard that each till operator is allocated a float for the day and, alone, operates the till allocated to him or her. At the end of the shift, the operator then places the day’s takings in a sealed bag, which they then places in a “drop safe”.
A security company collects the bags and transports them to the Standard Bank cash counter. At the bank, the bags are opened and the contents counted under surveillance cameras. The bank then issues a worksheet that indicates whether the money corresponds with what was collected at a particular till. It was at this stage that it was discovered that the employee was in excess by R628.78.
In terms of Woolworths policy, shortages and excesses that are R500 or more have to be investigated, accompanied by a sanction of dismissal.
In this case, there was testimony that the employee in question could not account for the extra cash in the till and appeared to have followed all required procedures.
But she was dismissed and the case went to arbitration. The arbitrator found her dismissal to be substantively unfair on the basis that the sanction was too harsh under the circumstances. The arbitrator also found that the employee’s till takings discrepancy was not the result of any negligence on her part because the employer could not find irregularities.
The arbitrator also found there was no evidence that she had been dishonest or that she intended benefiting from the surplus of the till.
He concluded that a warning would have sufficed to correct the employee’s conduct and ordered that she be reinstated with back pay of more than R14 000. Woolworths lost its initial challenge of this finding at the Labour Court and then lodged an appeal.
Last month, the Labour Appeal Court found the dismissal of the till operator to have been substantively fair.
There was no evidence to suggest that the punishment for the offence was not consistently applied by Woolworths. It could not be disputed that the employee had five previous till discrepancies and was on a final written warning, and the arbitrator had failed to appreciate that the sanction for a transgression of more than R500 was dismissal.