Labour Appeal Court Rules Employee’s Insolence Bars Return to Work

In this mat­ter, CCI Call Centres (Pty) Ltd v Pinn (DA7/2024) [2025] ZALAC 24; [2025] 8 BLLR 781 (LAC); (2025) 46 ILJ 2083 (LAC) (17 April 2025), the employee was employed as a man­age­ment account­ant respons­ible for gen­er­at­ing pay­ment codes to enable salary pay­ments.

In Janu­ary 2019, after express­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with not receiv­ing a salary increase and a bonus, he refused to cre­ate the codes.

His refusal, made in an email that was copied to senior col­leagues, included per­sonal attacks on the Chief Fin­an­cial Officer.

This con­duct led to a break­down in their work­ing rela­tion­ship.

Fol­low­ing a dis­cip­lin­ary hear­ing, the employee was dis­missed for gross insub­or­din­a­tion, gross insolence and inap­pro­pri­ate work­place con­duct.

He referred the mat­ter to arbit­ra­tion.

The Arbit­rator found the employee guilty of gross insub­or­din­a­tion and inap­pro­pri­ate con­duct, not­ing that his refusal to pre­pare payroll codes could have pre­ven­ted thou­sands of employ­ees from being paid on time.

Although the mis­con­duct was ser­i­ous, the Arbit­rator held that dis­missal was too harsh, espe­cially given the uncer­tainty around his job descrip­tion.

However, rein­state­ment was deemed imprac­tical due to the break­down of trust between the employee and the Chief Fin­an­cial Officer.

Instead, the employee was awar­ded com­pens­a­tion equi­val­ent to one month’s salary.

The employee chal­lenged the Arbit­rator’s award, arguing that he should have been rein­stated with full back pay or, altern­at­ively, received up to 12 months’ com­pens­a­tion.

The Labour Court agreed, find­ing that the Arbit­rator had erred by not rein­stat­ing him.

It sub­sti­tuted the award with an order of ret­ro­spect­ive rein­state­ment, reas­on­ing that there was insuf­fi­cient proof of an irre­triev­able break­down in the employ­ment rela­tion­ship.

The employer appealed to the Labour Appeal Court.

The LAC held that the Labour Court had mis­ap­plied the law by effect­ively re-hear­ing the case instead of apply­ing the cor­rect test for review: whether the Arbit­rator’s decision was one that a reas­on­able decision-maker could have made.

The Court emphas­ised that the Arbit­rator had care­fully weighed the employee’s ser­i­ous mis­con­duct against the fair­ness of dis­missal, con­clud­ing that rein­state­ment was unten­able due to the col­lapse of the trust rela­tion­ship.

The LAC cri­ti­cised the Labour Court for dis­reg­ard­ing sub­stan­tial evid­ence of the employee’s insub­or­din­a­tion and dis­respect, which struck at the core of the employ­ment rela­tion­ship.

The LAC upheld the appeal, set­ting aside the Labour Court’s order of rein­state­ment.

The Arbit­rator’s ori­ginal award of one month’s com­pens­a­tion was con­firmed. Each party was ordered to bear its own legal costs.

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