JAMAICA Public Service Company (JPSCo) workers hoping for another billion-dollar payout from the light and power company received a shocker Friday when the appellate court upheld an Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT) ruling that they are owed no further sums.

Justice Kirk Anderson of the Supreme Court had in 2010 quashed a part of the IDT’s ruling and sent the matter back to the arbitrators to decide on adjusted overtime and redundancy payments of $700 million the workers had been claiming.

Interest would have pushed that figure above the billion-dollar mark; sums the JPS — represented by Queen’s Counsel Patrick Foster and Symone Mayhew, instructed by Nunes, Scholefield, DeLeon & Co — said it couldn’t afford to pay.

But the court, on Friday, held that the IDT had made no error of law and therefore the supervisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court should not have been applied because the IDT had acted in accordance with the terms of reference agreed to between JPS and the workers.

The appellate court said that there was no evidence upon which the Supreme Court could have made its findings.

Lord Gifford, QC, and Emily Shields, instructed by Gifford, Thompson & Bright, appeared for the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Supervisory Employees; the National Workers Union; and the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, of which the workers are members.

The dispute that led to the IDT arose out of the implementation of a new salary structure.

The JPS had done a job reclassification of workers for the period 2001 to 2007 but at the completion of that process it was realised that there was a sum of over $4.1 billion owed to employees that the company could not pay.

The unions and the company entered into negotiations and a heads of agreement was signed by the company and the workers on the May 6, 2008 which involved payment of $2.3 billion.

After that sum was paid there was a dispute over the adjusted overtime and redundancy amounts arising from the reclassification exercise.

The company held that it had paid what it was obliged to pay under the agreement, and the unions disagreed, leading to the matter having to go to the IDT, which eventually decided in favour of the company that no more monies were owed to the workers.

The unions carried the matter to the Supreme Court, where Justice Anderson quashed the award and referred the matter back to a rehearing, but the JPS attorneys took the matter to the Court of Appeal contending that the judge’s decision was wrong.

The appellate court, in a unanimous decision delivered by president of the Court of Appeal Justice Seymour Panton (retired), Mahadev Dukharan and Hilary Phillips, upheld the IDT’s decision that the JPS owed the workers no more money.