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OTM 7: How to become a competent food safety professional
May 12, 2020 July 10, 2020 / Leave a Comment
Becoming a 'competent' food safety professional is the next level above advanced beginner in building your career in food safety and quality. At this level your role and responsibilities increase as your experience and confidence builds.
Welcome to Episode 7 of Off the Menu. Tune in, or read the adapted podcast transcription, to find out more on what the 'Competency' level means in terms of knowledge, skills, attributes, and work experience.
Episode 7 Highlights
How many years does it take to reach the 'competent' level?
Experience Builds Confidence
Identifying areas for improvement
Deploying the skills and knowledge for auditing
Using experience to drive outcomes
Ethical practices in the food industry
Interpersonal skills of a competent food safety professional
Developing leadership capability
Being highly committed to the process
Competency in context of food manufacturing
Adapted Podcast Transcription
Here is a transcript of what we spoke about in this episode. Both Pete and I have a lot of fun talking together so if there is anything in the transcript that doesn't make sense, listening to the actual podcast may put the words into context. Remember, don't take life too seriously.....and have a laugh 🙂
Amanda: If you're new to Off The Menu, we're in episode seven now where in this particular series we're looking at how to progress your career in the food industry. We've really been focusing on what skills you need at each level, what experience is expected, what knowledge you should have to be at this particular level, and also the personal attributes that allow you to be at this level as well.
Peter: We also talk about how your work experience demonstrates your ability to apply the knowledge you have learned by using your skills, and how your attributes help you progress into roles of more complexity, more authority and more responsibility.
Amanda: In this episode we're now onto the level of 'competent'. What does it take to be a competent food safety professional? Peter, can you explain to our listeners what this level of 'competent' means?
Peter: Absolutely. Well, to use the words of Snoop Dog, you know your shizzle at this point in time. You've actually attained a sound working level of knowledge and skills for the food industry.
Amanda: Okay. We're expecting this to be around about the three-year experience mark.
Peter: I think you're at the five-year mark, maybe three to five years would be about right, three to five years in this role, depending on how complex the role is that you're working in.
Amanda: Obviously the industry that you're in as well, if you'd be moving around to different ones. So it doesn't mean that just because you'd been working for five years, that's not what we're saying.
Peter: No, no. It's five years of relevant experience. Absolutely. The food industry. In the food industry and perhaps within a role within the food industry as well. It's all one thing to be an icing fondant shoveler five years ago or now.
Amanda: Go back to episode five to learn about Peter's illustrious career and shovelling icing mix.
Peter: After three to five years of experience, you've probably migrated into roles such as being on the internal audit team. You might be part of the team that develops the food safety systems, or you might even be holding down some sort of regulatory role in the organization.
Amanda: Being on the HACCP team, that's probably a classic one around the food safety. I think also definitely the internal audit team. You may not be the audit team leader, but you're definitely on the team auditing different sections within your actual business. There's some of the job roles that you might be doing from a food safety perspective. But I think also you could be a supervisor on a production line.
Peter: Oh absolutely. You can be a supervisor of a team with varying levels of responsibility. But more importantly now you've got authority, which means you're able to make decisions, solve problems, and deviate from normal process under good cause.
Amanda: I think one this week actually I've been away, one of my clients had been audited to SQF. And when I look at the structure within their business, we have our process workers and then the next level is the team leader, which this is where I think the team leader falls into this competent level as opposed to the supervisor of say, the entire packing area. Because my client has a 24 hour production at that site, they have three shifts, three different team leaders as opposed to the supervisor who will do the entire department from that side of it. So that is what I'm going to refer back to - it's that team leader position.
Peter: I think from my memories of working in the food industry, I think I hit a level of confidence when I became an external food safety auditor. What I mean by external food safety auditor, I was a supplier auditor or second party auditor, so wasn't necessarily out doing third party certification audits yet. But I was well on the way to becoming a certification or compliance auditor.
I thought I was competent because, well one, I was actually telling myself that I was competent. I had self-certifications, plenty of that in industry, but I knew a lot about the industry that I was working in. I had quite granular detail around the processes that we were employing within that production and within that factory and within that industry.
That allowed me to go out and determine that these ingredients needed to be a certain grade or a certain quality in order to not impact the outcomes of our production process because I knew what a non-compliant ingredient would do to the process.
Amanda: Peter looking at what you're talking about regarding your other experience of when you felt you got to that level of competence.
Peter: Yes, so one thing that I was very confident about is being able to identify hazards and severity, but also the likelihood. That's a different skill set that you're learning, which is - I know something's bad, and how bad it's going to be. But what I'm actually doing now is I'm learning how to predict when that could occur or how often that might occur given the production environment or given the operating conditions. That shows that I've had sufficient time to study the process, study the statistics or the history of that process and be able to make a forward determination of future performance. That sounded like an audit.
Amanda: Yes, it does. And at this point, were you actually provided by your employer at the time, additional training or additional courses that you went to increase that level of knowledge that you previously had?
Peter: Yes. Why did I get picked by the employer to do that? One is because I was helping in the previous roles to helping to improve the process as an automatic function of my role, so I was able to identify improvement. I was given enough reign in that role to identify improvement and have others verify and implement that improvement.
That gave the employer sufficient amount of trust and confidence in my capabilities to take it to a higher level of authority, which means in the supplier auditor role, it could mean turning off a supplier or approving a new supplier for use. Because I was given that level of authority, they wanted to make sure that I had the level of competency or capability to go with it. The component that they wanted to up-skill was the knowledge. That's where the internal auditing training came in.
Amanda: Do you think after you received your internal auditor training, did you believe at that point you were competent even though you hadn't been out and done any actual auditing or reviews of that type? You just had the knowledge.
We have an online internal auditing course and online HACCP course on how to put together your food safety plan and identify hazards and risks, but also for the, internal auditing course, how to actually go out and what you should be looking for. Did you feel based on that knowledge alone, let's say for the internal auditing that you are competent even though you didn't have the experience?
Peter: Let me break that down for you. I was confident that I could deploy an auditing process so I could go onto a site and do the introduction or do the planning, do the introduction, do the audit, interview, observation and review, identify whether there was an issue, write up corrective action and then be able to report that and negotiate that to the client. I could do that.
What I didn't have was the competence or necessarily the confidence in just yet was could I do that on a supplier's site because I didn't know what I was going to experience when I got out there. I didn't know the condition of the place, the location or anything like that. That comes with experience doing multiple audits. You tend to build up a working history or working knowledge of what the industry starts to look like.
Amanda: I think from my background and my role in inspection with the government because we were doing that every day, that was our normal. With somebody who is working in a food production facility, they are not auditing every single day. I think it comes with repetition and frequency.
When you live a 'live experience', knowledge and skills greatly improves, and you can really fast track areas if you are doing it every single day. I was going into many different factories, chicken processing, salad production, milk production, and then going and doing retail outlets. When you are doing that every day, I really believe that you, your skill set just improves absolutely 10-fold. I should say it happens a lot quicker than what you would be in industry when you are only auditing say once a week or once a month.
Peter: Well, you're starting to use a different set of skills. Now you're starting to look at identifying issues or you're starting to do predictive analysis, which is what's going to happen next if this process keeps running like this or if those people keep doing stuff like that, what is the most likely outcome that will occur and that's why people get promoted up to supervisor level or perhaps even at this level.
You might become a manager, you might be quite lucky, but what it does is that you're promoted there because you can see into the near future perhaps a little bit and say, I know that on this team, these three people are going to do the job the same every single time. They're going to slack off about halfway through the day because they get a bit sleepy and their work level drops off, so I'm going to have to rotate their jobs around so that they stay sharp, so you're starting to be able to peer into the future based on your past experiences.
Amanda: I was going to say from experience, I know that I could, there was about 7 out of 10 butcher shops, I know I could go in there and they would be using illegal chemicals. I knew exactly where to go look for these chemicals. Because of my past experience, I didn't have to waste time asking questions. I just knew that it would have been shoved up under the sink, in the hand wash area or out the back because they would see you coming a mile away.
Back in these days we went through a phase where we actually had our vehicles marked, so they knew that the food inspector was coming, which was a stupid, stupid idea. And we did fight that and got the stickers removed from our cars. But it would be nothing for them to go and put the chemicals, the illegal chemicals out the back. I would just go straight out the back before someone had a chance to run around the side and go and dump it in a bin or something.
Also the area that I had to look after, you'd get maybe two butcher shops into a run and then you had stopped because what they would do, they would ring the next town, the next town butcher and say inspectors are out there on their way, blah blah blah. So we knew from experience that number three, number four, number five would all be compliant. The next day went up and started in the reverse, we could grab those three straight away because we knew that they were doing the wrong thing. I'd say highly predictive and being able to map people's actions of what they would do.
Peter: What we're really talking around here is just knowing where to look for things as you're starting to further develop ethics now you might say. Oh, but I'm an ethical person anyway. I was born with it. Well, no one's born with ethics for a starter. It's something that comes with your family and your upbringing and also attributed back to your behavioural attributes as well. But what we're talking about is what's right for the business and what's right for the process and then hopefully what's right for the consumer of the product at the end of the day as well.
Amanda: Well, hopefully in that food safety role, you're actually putting that as a priority because I do have a lot of people contact me around what should they do. They're in a business where there's no management commitment. They're doing dodgy things. The poor QA person or food safety manager or team leader or whoever are afraid to sign anything or whistle-blow because they need the job. So, it's becomes where do you draw that line? And hopefully when you're at this competent level, you can actually make that decision of what is more important. Hopefully it is the safety of the people you're producing the food for.
Peter: I think we're seeing that turn up in food safety systems these days that everyone's looking for the next level, the next paradigm in food safety. That's where I'm hearing conversations around food safety culture and how to award it. This ties back into this ethics as a component of food culture, but as a person who's competent in the space, you'll be able to predict the outcome of productions at that site based on things such as the culture of the organization, not just the system.
Amanda: Yes. I also think being able to identify when things aren't right. And I think also at this level, just starting to trust your own inner feelings around stuff. If you have got a hunch that something's not right, you tend to act, you're getting more intuition around what's right and what's wrong within the business.
Peter: I think also very importantly is that your peers or your employers also see that, and they are trusting you to use those skills and attributes more often in your role. So you're adding more value to the organization by using or utilizing these sorts of skills. And so what, what does that look like? I mean, if I was an employer, what would this person look like? Behaviourally when they're working on my site? I would say they're very confident. I would say that they are very influential in the workspace. A workspace. People are coming to them for an opinion or they're influencing the opinion decisions.
Amanda: That's definitely one thing. If you're a team leader, you have to have that ability because you need to be able to enact change. If someone's not doing the right thing, you need to be able to help change their behaviour. If you don't have that influence, you won't let them change it.
Peter: Absolutely. Intimately linked with that is interpersonal skills. You'll be able to adjust your message based on the audience you're communicating to. You're thinking about what the most effective way is to communicate with your audience.
Amanda: You are starting to think a little bit outside the square now because not everybody is the same. The way that you get one person to do something is completely different to another. I see that even in my own two children. How I get my favourite son to do something is very different to what I say to my daughter who I don't really need to say anything to at all because she's a mini me. She just knows. She can do it and I think we actually share the same brain. She just knows the way. My son, you have to talk to him in a different way.
Peter: Well, these are behavioural attributes. And as a person that's competent, you should have some training or some skills around behavioural leadership or behavioural techniques and learn how to adjust your style to get the most out of the person that you're interacting with. And so this ties into leadership. At this level you should start to have some quite well-developed leadership capabilities.
Amanda: I think also if you're in that role, the knowledge of what's expected of a leader, as well as what attributes and what skills. I don't think that is a missing piece. I see that in a lot of my consulting clients that those team leaders have not had any leadership training. They haven't been sent to those courses to learn. People are different, and you have to adjust your message.
Peter: Absolutely. Thinking back to some of the roles that I've held in the industry, moving outside of a supplier role, I was asked to volunteer on a certification panel at this particular point in time because I was recognized by others as having good ethics. What should auditor's ethics look like? I was also very conscientious about the work I was doing, so I was doing work not only for the business I was in but also for the industry too. In other words, building the recognition of other audit professionals out there. At this point in time, I still was not an external auditor, I was an internal auditor or a second party auditor if you wish to call it.
But people from external audit agencies were looking at the work I was doing because our paths would cross. There would be an external auditor doing a certification audit on the same day as I was doing an internal audit. People watch your capabilities; people see that you're quite skilful at deploying your knowledge to get an outcome. They see you are demonstrating good experience because you can identify and you can predict the future a little bit, do a bit of a problem identification and problem solving at the same time.
Amanda: I think also to go hand in hand with that is that you are highly committed to the process and not just around, I'm here to earn money or I'm here to pay the bills. You're actually starting to think outside that space to something more like "I actually want to make sure that things are safe and things are better" and the way we get better is that we work with our team to help them get up to the same level as what we are.
I think those interpersonal skills and being able to report to management around this is what's happening. You might now start having some influence with management. Maybe you come up with the, 'I think there's a better way to do the process'. I remember when we talked back in the novice episode, we don't just rock in and start saying, "I think this job would be better if we use something like a shovel six times the size of the one we're using. We'll be able to get it for the job to get done quicker". You don't do that, but I think now at the competent level, you can actually start talking about change management and more efficiency in practices.
Peter: Absolutely. I think 'so how would you know if you're competent personally'? What would give it away? Well, apart from you having a feeling about it, some of the things you might recognize as people are coming up, having a conversation to you about your next job, you know, but that could be, there's a manager role popping up in the business and I think you should consider applying for it, or you know, there's a project team being put together.
I think you should get on that project team, or hey, there is a meeting for the industry association end of the week, in the evening. I want you to come with me to it because I want to introduce you to some people. These are pretty good indicators that you're at a competent level. And high trust. Because you're starting to not only develop processes and people and a product for an organization, you're also being asked in some cases to represent that organization to the industry.
So you're at a competent level where you can go in and you can talk with a deep understanding of the organization, the trends that it follows in terms of where we've just implemented this new bit of machinery and it does this for us. Or we've upgraded our HACCP system to include VACCP now because when, you know, where we've started in new product line and selling to a new market with a new customer, so you can talk at those levels. Now you're a competent person.
Amanda: And I think just to put that in a context of food industry as in manufacturing, maybe you've been asked to go onto a task force with other like businesses as a representative of the company which maybe has a barrier such as food safety. Maybe you've got sister companies within your group of all your organizational group that you're now representing your site in the food safety at these places.
Peter: Absolutely. It might just be hovering below a line manager, a level in the organization. If you're in the laboratory you could be at a technical expert or a technician level. I should say, or a senior technician, but you might not have made it yet to laboratory manager or technical experts.
Amanda: I think even representing a team in a company meeting. You have to go to that Monday morning meeting and report on what your outcomes are and what you're going to do for that week to the rest of the other business teams within your organization.
Peter: You're not only organizing your time now; you could be organizing other's time within your team. What tasks are you going to do when a task occurs as well or what happens if a task can't be completed? Line's broken down, cleaned for maintenance, etcetera. What do you do with the people in your charge at that point in time?
Amanda: So, time management obviously is another attribute we haven't really touched on yet, but this is definitely at this level of being competent.
Peter: If you're unsure of what a competent position is or if you're competent, then you can always drop Amanda or myself a note after the podcast and we'll do our best to answer it for you.
Amanda: That wraps up this episode where Peter and I have looked at the experience, skills, knowledge and attributes that you need to become a competent food safety professional. In the next episode we will be covering the next level which is going to be the proficient professional. I will be looking forward to learning what's the difference between proficient and competent.
Listen to more episodes of Off the Menu
About Off the Menu
In the first season of Off the Menu, Amanda Evans-Lara and Peter Holtmann dive into career development for newbies and professionals working in the food industry. Listen in to learn about the skills, knowledge, personal attributes and work experience needed to map your food industry career path.


A grand Baoya new energy electric car line-off ceremony was held in Dezhou Economic Development Zone on the morning of October 30, 2011. The attendees include Wu Cuiyun, the Dezhou Party Secretary and the Director of Municipal People's Congress Standing Committee, and Chen Xianyun, the Deputy Party Secretary and the mayor, and Shi Haoquan, the chairman of Dezhou People's Political Consultative Committee, and Yuan Xiuhe, the Deputy Party Secretary, as well as Mu Hongwei, the president of Baoya Company, and other relevant leaders.
Firstly, Baoya Company president Mu Hongwei delivered a speech. He said that it only took over 100 days to finish the construction of Dezhou Baoya Basement. Such fast speed and high efficiency was out of our imagination, which could be called Dezhou Efficiency or Dezhou Speed. He believed that in the near future, it would become a beautiful story and legend. Actually, this Dezhou Efficiency was a microcosm of great foresight and high efficiency of Dezhou municipal party committee and municipal government. We never forgot the great support from Dezhou leaders at the most critical moment of our enterprise development.
In addition, we would build stamping factory, welding plant and spraying plant. In March next year, we would hold a large scale of distributors and suppliers conference in Dezhou. By the end of next year, we would strive to build up the Baoya Electric Automobile Industrial Park. Then, the relevant leaders visited Dezhou Baoya Assembly Plant, and highly praised our tool cart.
Finally, Dezhou Baoya new energy electric car line-off ceremony ended in the test drive of the leaders. After four processing factories went into operation, Dezhou Baoya would become the world class electric car research and development platform, the largest domestic electric car manufacturing base, as well as the first modern factory in full accordance with the design concept of electric car in China. It was estimated that by 2015, the annual production of our car would reach over 300,000, and the production value would exceed 1.58 billion dollars.


Southend Fertility and IVF Centre was established in the year 2001 by Dr. Sonia Malik, a renowned gynecologist and IVF specialist along with Dr. Avtar Krishnan who is a well known Anesthesiologist. With the first center being set up Vasant Vihar in New Delhi, Southend Fertility now has 7 centers set up in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab.
With an excellent infrastructure together with state of the art lab, latest equipments and advanced technologies, Southend Fertility and IVF Centre stands at par with the international standards. It provides treatment for various infertility issues including ethical donor and surrogacy programs.
Every Southend Fertility and IVF Centre has a dedicated team of specialists. The teams of expert and professional infertility specialists, gynecologists, embryologists and urologists use ethical practices and provide the best services as per the need of the patient.


The forecast shows weather for each 3-hourly interval today and for the following days.
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I get that fan schizophrenia is part of the game, but Sunday was enough hair-pulling to merit four floor-length wigs. Fans were hollering for Perry Orth to be benched despite growling during last week's fourth quarter how if Orth had played against Mississippi State and Kentucky, USC would have won.
They were also harping on Kurt Roper to call plays to fit his personnel, not realizing that Roper is doing just that. It doesn't help when the personnel isn't that good.
The fact is USC is playing a bunch of freshmen or guys who haven't played that much because of injury. Everyone saw on Sunday what Deebo Samuel can do when he's healthy, but his troublesome hamstrings made Sunday just his third game. Rico Dowdle is definitely the future at tailback, but a sports hernia made Sunday his second game, and he fumbled away one possession.
Will Muschamp and Roper were never going to get very long of a leash in the public eyes with their past at Florida. I get that, but here, the comparison isn't (yet) feasible. At Florida, Muschamp recruited to a system he thought would work and didn't.
Here, he stepped into a cupboard stocked by the previous homeowners, and all that was in it were a couple of roach traps.
USC thought it could plan around Samuel. He was hurt. USC thought Brandon McIlwain would develop into a great quarterback. He still might, but his last two appearances have shown him unwilling to throw the ball.
Orth is a wonderful young man who this team would cheerfully follow through the Gates of Hell. But when it comes to football, he's a really smart kid who knows what to do with the football, but doesn't have the talent in himself or what's around him to consistently get it there and score points.
Even when the Gamecocks get something going, they backtrack. They had three first-half turnovers Sunday, after penalties on their first two plays. Then came the dropped passes, the throws short of the sticks and the sacks.
The only solution they can try is to play both QBs at the same time (split McIlwain out at receiver, maybe, just to show a different look?) but that takes away somebody who's produced, be it an extra tight end or extra offensive lineman. Or the one straw they haven't yet grasped – freshman Jake Bentley, he of the fabled arm and last name.
Sum it all up and nobody's happy, but what did you expect? Muschamp walked into a bad situation and injuries and inconsistency have made it worse.
What he and Roper are doing now is hopefully establishing what they want to do for the future, recruiting to fit that system and finding current players to plug into it. As bad as USC can look, there are some players on the field.
They're hoping to find a solution that works for the final six games. The answers in the first six have the season hanging by the fingertips.
USC quarterback Perry Orth throws against Georgia on Sunday. Matt Walsh mwalsh@thestate.com

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Mercury Gallery was established in Cork Street in May 1964 by Gillian Raffles to exhibit and promote the work of young figurative British artists and to deal in Sculpture, Paintings and Works on Paper by 20th Century British and European Artists.
1n 2001 Gillian Raffles vacated the gallery space in Cork Street, she continues to specialise in the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and deals from home. Mercury Gallery now mounts exhibitions in association with other galleries.
My interest and association with the work and story of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska began in 1965 when I purchased five small Zoo drawings. Over the years there have been 10 Mercury Gallery selling exhibitions; loan exhibitions to British museums, commercial galleries in Toronto, Edinburgh and Henley, and a Mercury Gallery exhibition of Gaudier's Sculpture and Works on paper at the Chicago Art Expo in 1993. Further, important works have been lent to exhibitions at museums in France and Germany.
In 2005 I was offered some original manuscript papers written between 1915 and 1918 by Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska. These were some 50 double-sided sheets which had lain forgotten and unpublished. They included a version of Sophie Brzeska's autobiography 'Matka'; accounts of her meeting with Henri Gaudier in Paris; of their life together in France and England and of the events following his death. She recounts the 'troubles' she had with T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, Robert Bevan and others trying to agree about the arrangements for the Memorial exhibition of Gaudier's work and she also describes evenings in the studio with Horace Brodzky. Included are a group of letters from her to the artist Nina Hamnett. The original manuscript was written partly in French and partly in English and vividly evokes her emotional state.
This offer of the manuscript writings resulted in my translating and publishing these otherwise unedited in 2008 in a limited hand-bound edition of 125 copies. Although she has been frequently cited elsewhere this is the first time her actual words have been published.


In the presence of naive consumers, a participation distortion arises in competitive markets because the additional profits from naive consumers lead competitive firms to lower transparent prices below cost. Using a simple calibration, we argue that the participation distortion in the US credit-card market may be large. Our results call for a redirection of some of the large amount of empirical research on the quantification of the welfare losses from market power, to the quantification of welfare losses that are due to the firms' reactions to consumer misunderstandings.
Joint with Paul Heidhues. Review of Industrial Organization (2015), 47(3), pp. 341-354.
We analyze innovation incentives in a simple model of a competitive retail market with naive consumers. Firms selling perfect substitutes play a game consisting of an innovation stage and a pricing stage. At the pricing stage, firms simultaneously set a transparent "up-front price" and an "additional price," and decide whether to shroud the additional price from naive consumers. To capture especially financial products such as banking services, credit cards, and mutual funds, we allow for a floor on the product's up-front price. At the preceding innovation stage, a firm can invest either in increasing the product's value (value-increasing innovation) or in increasing the maximum additional price (exploitative innovation). We show that if the price floor is not binding, the incentive for either kind of innovation equal the "appropriable part" of the innovation, implying similar incentives for exploitative and value-increasing innovations. If the price floor is binding, however, innovation incentives are often stronger for exploitative than for value-increasing innovations. Because learning ways to charge higher additional prices increases the profits from shrouding and thereby lowers the motive to unshroud, a firm may have strong incentives to make appropriable exploitative innovations, and even stronger incentives to make non-appropriable exploitative innovations. In contrast, the incentive to make non-appropriable value-increasing innovations is zero or negative, and even the incentive to make appropriable value-increasing innovations is strong only if the product is socially wasteful. These results help explain why firms in the financial industry have been willing to make innovations others could easily copy, and why these innovations often seem to have included exploitative features.
Joint with Paul Heidhues and Takeshi Murooka. Accepted, AEJ: Micro. Updated December 2014.
This review provides a critical survey of psychology-and-economics ("behavioral-economics") research in contract theory. First, I introduce the theories of individual decisionmaking most frequently used in behavioral contract theory, and formally illustrate some of their implications in contracting settings. Second, I provide a more comprehensive (but informal) survey of the psychology-and-economics work on classical contract-theoretic topics: moral hazard, screening, mechanism design, and incomplete contracts. I also summarize research on a new topic spawned by psychology and economics, exploitative contracting, that studies contracts designed primarily to take advantage of agent mistakes.
Journal of Economic Literature (2014), 52(4), pp. 1075-1118.
A central assumption of neoclassical economics is that reservation prices for familiar products express people's true preferences for these products, that is, they represent the total benefit that a good confers to the consumers, and are thus, independent of actual prices in the market. Nevertheless, a vast amount of research has shown that valuations can be sensitive to other salient prices; particularly when individuals are explicitly anchored on them. In this paper, the authors extend previous research on single-price anchoring and study the sensitivity of valuations to the distribution of prices found for the product in the market. In addition, they examine its possible causes. They find that market-dependent valuations cannot be fully explained by rational inferences consumers draw about a product's value, and are unlikely to be fully explained by true market-dependent preferences. Rather, the market dependence of valuations likely reflects consumers' focus on something other than the total benefit that the product confers to them. Furthermore, this paper shows that market-dependent valuations persist when – as in many real-life settings – individuals make repeated purchase decisions over time and infer the distribution of the product's prices from their market experience. Finally, the authors consider the implications of their findings for marketers and consumers.
Joint with Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (2014), 27; pp. 200-208.
It is widely known that loss aversion leads individuals to dislike risk, and as has been argued by many researchers, in many instances this creates an incentive for firms to shield consumers and employees against economic risks. Complementing previous research, we show that consumer loss aversion can also have the opposite effect: it can lead a firm to optimally introduce risk into an otherwise deterministic environment. We consider a profit-maximizing monopolist selling to a loss-averse consumer, where (following Kőszegi and Rabin (2006)) we assume that the consumer's reference point is her recent rational expectations about the purchase. We establish that for any degree of consumer loss aversion, the monopolist's optimal price distribution consists of low and variable "sale" prices and a high and atomic "regular" price. Realizing that she will buy at the sale prices and hence that she will purchase with positive probability, the consumer chooses to avoid the painful uncertainty in whether she will get the product by buying also at the regular price. This pricing pattern is consistent with several recently documented facts regarding retailer pricing. We show that market power is crucial for this result: when firms compete ex ante for consumers, they choose deterministic prices.
Joint with Paul Heidhues. Theoretical Economics (2014), 9; pp. 217-251. Older (2011) version.
We present a generally applicable theory of focusing based on the hypothesis that a person focuses more on, and hence overweights, attributes in which her options differ more. Our model predicts that the decisionmaker is too prone to choose options with concentrated advantages relative to alternatives, but maximizes utility when the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives are equally concentrated. Applying our model to intertemporal choice, these results predict that a person exhibits present bias and time inconsistency when -- such as in lifestyle choices and other widely invoked applications of hyperbolic discounting -- the future effect of a current decision is distributed over many dates, and the effects of multiple decisions accumulate. But unlike in previous models, in our theory (1) present bias is lower when the costs of current misbehavior are less dispersed, helping to explain why people respond more to monetary incentives than to health concerns in harmful consumption; and (2) time inconsistency is lower when a person commits to fewer decisions with accumulating effects in her ex-ante choice. In addition, a person does not fully maximize welfare even when making decisions ex ante: (3) she commits to too much of an activity -- e.g., exercise or work -- that is beneficial overall; and (4) makes "future-biased" commitments when -- such as in preparing for a big event -- the benefit of many periods' effort is concentrated in a single goal.
Joint with Ádám Szeidl. Quarterly Journal of Economics (2013), 128(1); pp. 53-107. Older version.
We analyze contract choices, loan-repayment behavior, and welfare in a model of a competitive credit market when borrowers have a taste for immediate gratification. Consistent with many credit cards and subprime mortgages, for most types of non-sophisticated borrowers the baseline repayment terms are cheap, but they are also inefficiently front-loaded and delays require paying large penalties. Although credit is for future consumption, non-sophisticated consumers overborrow, pay the penalties, and back-load repayment, suffering large welfare losses. Prohibiting large penalties for deferring small amounts of repayment -- akin to recent regulations in the US credit-card and mortgage markets -- can raise welfare.
I develop a dynamic model of individual decisionmaking in which the agent derives utility from physical outcomes as well as from rational beliefs about physical outcomes ("anticipation"), and these two payoff components can interact. Beliefs and behavior are jointly determined in a personal equilibrium by the requirement that behavior given past beliefs must be consistent with those beliefs. I explore three phenomena made possible by utility from anticipation, and prove that if the decisionmaker's behavior is distinguishable from a person's who cares only about physical outcomes, she must exhibit at least one of these phenomena. First, the decisionmaker can be prone to self-fulfilling expectations. Second, she might be time-inconsistent even if her preferences in all periods are identical. Third, she might exhibit informational preferences, where these preferences are intimately connected to her attitudes toward disappointments. Applications of the framework to reference-dependent preferences, impulsive behaviors, and emotionally difficult choices are discussed.
Economic Theory (2010), 44(3), 415-444.
We investigate costly yet futile attempts at self-control when consumption of a harmful product has a binary breakdown/no-breakdown nature and individuals tend to underestimate their need for self-control. Considering time-inconsistent preferences as well as temptation disutility, we show that becoming more sophisticated can decrease welfare and investigate what kind of mistaken beliefs lead to low welfare. With time-inconsistent preferences, being close to perfectly understanding one's preferences but assigning zero probability to true preferences induces the worst outcome.
Joint with Paul Heidhues. Journal of the European Economic Association (2009), 7(2-3), pp. 423-434.
Joint with Matthew Rabin. American Economic Review (2009), 99(3), pp. 909-936.
This article explores some conceptual issues in the study of well-being using the traditional economic approach of inferring preferences solely from choice behavior. We argue that choice behavior alone can never reveal which situations make people better off, even with unlimited data and under the maintained hypothesis of 100% rational choice. Ancillary assumptions or additional forms of data such as happiness measures are always needed. With such ancillary assumptions and additional data, however, the use of revealed preference to study well-being can be significantly improved, so that the choices people make can jointly identify preferences, mistakes, and well-being.
Joint with Matthew Rabin. Journal of Public Economics (2008), 92, pp. 1821-1832.
Joint with Paul Heidhues. American Economic Review (2008), 98(4), pp. 1245-1268.
We analyze ways in which heterogeneity in responsiveness to incentives ("drive") affects employees' incentives and firms' incentive systems in a career concerns model. On the one hand, since more driven agents work harder in response to existing incentives than less driven ones—and therefore pay is increasing in perceived drive—there is a motive to increase effort to signal high drive. These "drive-signaling incentives" are strongest with intermediate levels of existing incentives. On the other hand, because past output of a more driven agent will seem to the principal to reflect lower ability, there is an incentive to decrease effort to signal low drive. The former effect dominates early in the career, and the latter effect dominates towards the end. To maximize incentives, the principal wants to observe a noisy measure of the agent's effort—such as the number of hours he works—early but not late in his career.
Joint with Wei Li. Journal of the European Economic Association (2008), 6(1), pp. 210-236.
We use Kőszegi and Rabin's (2006) model of reference-dependent utility, and an extension of it that applies to decisions with delayed consequences, to study preferences over monetary risk. Because our theory equates the reference point with recent probabilistic beliefs about outcomes, it predicts specific ways in which the environment influences attitudes toward modest-scale risk. It replicates "classical" prospect theory—including the prediction of distaste for insuring losses—when exposure to risk is a surprise, but implies first-order risk aversion when a risk, and the possibility of insuring it, are anticipated. A prior expectation to take on risk decreases aversion to both the anticipated and additional risk. For large-scale risk, the model allows for standard "consumption utility" to dominate reference- dependent "gain-loss utility," generating nearly identical risk aversion across situations.
We develop a model of reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion where "gain–loss utility" is derived from standard "consumption utility" and the reference point is determined endogenously by the economic environment. We assume that a person's reference point is her rational expectations held in the recent past about outcomes, which are determined in a personal equilibrium by the requirement that they must be consistent with optimal behavior given expectations. In deterministic environments, choices maximize consumption utility, but gain–loss utility influences behavior when there is uncertainty. Applying the model to consumer behavior, we show that willingness to pay for a good is increasing in the expected probability of purchase and in the expected prices conditional on purchase. In within-day labor-supply decisions, a worker is less likely to continue work if income earned thus far is unexpectedly high, but more likely to show up as well as continue work if expected income is high.
This paper models interactions between a party with anticipatory emotions and a party who responds strategically to those emotions, a situation that is common in many health, political, employment, and personal settings. An "agent" has information with both decision-making value and emotional implications for an uninformed "principal" whose utility she wants to maximize. If she cannot directly reveal her information, to increase the principal's anticipatory utility she distorts instrumental decisions toward the action associated with good news. But because anticipatory utility derives from beliefs about instrumental outcomes, undistorted actions would yield higher ex ante total and anticipatory utility. If the agent can certifiably convey her information, she does so for good news, but unless this leads the principal to make a very costly mistake, to shelter his feelings she pretends to be uninformed when the news is bad.
This paper models behavior when a decision maker cares about and manages her self-image. In addition to having preferences over material outcomes, the agent derives "ego utility" from positive views about her ability to do well in a skill-sensitive, "ambitious," task. Although she uses Bayes' rule to update beliefs, she tends to become overconfident regarding which task is appropriate for her. If tasks are equally informative about ability, her task choice is also overconfident. If the ambitious task is more informative about ability, she might initially display underconfidence in behavior, and, if she is disappointed by her performance, later become too ambitious. People with ego utility prefer to acquire free information in smaller pieces. Applications to employee motivation and other economic settings are discussed.
One of the most cogent criticisms of excise taxes is their regressivity, with lower income groups spending a much larger share of their income on goods such as cigarettes than do higher income groups. We argue that traditional quantity-based measures of incidence are only appropriate under a very restrictive ''time-consistent'' model of consumption of sin goods. A model that is much more consistent with existing evidence on smoking decisions is a time-inconsistent formulation where excise taxes on cigarettes serve a self-control function that is valued by smokers who would like to quit but cannot. This self-control function benefits lower income groups more, since they have a significantly higher price sensitivity of smoking. Calibrations show that, as a result, cigarette taxes are much less regressive than previously assumed, and are even progressive for a wide variety of parameter values.
Economic models of patient decision-making emphasize the costs of getting medical attention and the improved physical health that results from it. This note builds a model of patient decision-making when fears or anxiety about the future—captured as beliefs about next period's state of health— also enter the patient's utility function. Anxiety can lead the patient to avoid doctor's visits or other easily available information about her health. However, this avoidance cannot take any form: she will never avoid the doctor with small problems, and under regularity conditions she will never go to a bad doctor to limit the information received.
Some people have self-control problems regularly. This paper adds endogenous retirement to Laibson's quasi-hyperbolic discounting savings model [Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (1997) 443–477]. Earlier selves think that the deciding self tends to retire too early and may save less to induce later retirement. Still earlier selves may think the pre-retirement self does this too much, saving more to induce early retirement. The consumption pattern may be different from that with exponential discounting. Other observational non-equivalence includes the impact of changing mandatory retirement rules or work incentives on savings and a possibly negative marginal propensity to consume out of increased future earnings. Naive agents are briefly considered.
This paper makes two contributions to the modeling of addiction. First, we provide new and convincing evidence that smokers are forward-looking in their smoking decisions, using state excise tax increases that have been legislatively enacted but are not yet effective, and monthly data on consumption. Second, we recognize the strong evidence that preferences with respect to smoking are time inconsistent, with individuals both not recognizing the true difficulty of quitting and searching for self-control devices to help them quit. We develop a new model of addictive behavior that takes as its starting point the standard "rational addiction" model, but incorporates time-inconsistent preferences. This model also exhibits forward-looking behavior, but it has strikingly different normative implications; in this case optimal government policy should depend not only on the externalities that smokers impose on others but also on the "internalities" imposed by smokers on themselves. We estimate that the optimal tax per pack of cigarettes should be at least one dollar higher under our formulation than in the rational addiction case.
The isothermal change of the magnetic entropy of a magnetically ordered material upon application of external magnetic field can be calculated from the temperature and field dependence of the magnetization or of the specific heat. The adiabatic temperature change, i.e., the magnetocaloric effect ~MCE! can be measured directly or can be calculated via different methods using the field-dependent specific heat values, or a combination of data obtained via magnetization and thermal measurements. In the present study, magnetic and thermal measurements were carried out on Gd75Y25(TC=232 K) and Gd48Y52(TC=161 K) samples, for applied fields ranging between 0 and 7 T. From both datasets, the magnetic entropy change and MCE values were calculated and compared, in order to assess the mutual reliability of the methods applied. The magnetically or thermally deduced specific heat discontinuities show a reasonable agreement within experimental error. Similar comparison of the calculated magnetic entropy changes reveals that the measured transition temperature and the shape of the curve do not depend on the method selected. It is demonstrated that the choice of an integration constant during entropy calculation has a significant impact on the adiabatic temperature change deduced from the field and temperature dependence of the entropies. For the MCE, a better approximation can be obtained using the magnetically acquired magnetic entropy change and the field-dependent specific heat. The results prove that magnetic measurements carried out in high enough magnetic fields provide reliable information on the isothermal magnetic entropy change and, when combined with field-dependent specific heat measurements, on the magnetocaloric effect as well.


text:
HomeWorld News
Russians to benefit from Protocol 14
On Thursday the Russian Parliament's lower house ratified Protocol 14 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Now Russians can appeal against unsatisfactory domestic court rulings.
Italy, Turkey and France top the list for complaints upheld in Strasbourg. Russia is fourth, with most cases linked to un-enforced judgments.
Dmitry Gorokhov, a former Soviet soldier, was sent to the Chernobyl power plant to help clean up the radioactive debris after the disaster of 1986. He became ill afterwards, but a legal action he won in Russia to increase his disability allowance was never enforced. He ended up going to the European Court of Human Rights – and became one of the first Russians to win a case against his own government in Strasbourg.
"Our complaint was promptly reviewed and in 2004 a European court ruling was issued for the non-enforcement of the domestic court's rulings," says Gorokhov.
As well as Russians, citizens of 46 other countries are eligible to file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Judges have been swamped with cases, causing a major backlog. This has led to complications and disappointment for many of those seeking justice.
Efforts to speed up European justice were behind the introduction of Protocol 14 – part of the European Convention of Human Rights. The measure is intended to simplify proceedings. Russia was the only country not to ratify it until last week after the Council of Europe agreed to allow Russian judges to participate in actions involving their home country.
Russian State Duma Deputy Vladimir Pligin says that the whole discussion took approximately three years.
"Of course there were some problems concerning the understanding of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation and its national interests," Pligin told RT. "After receiving an explanation from the cabinet of ministers and from the court itself, the deputies of the state Duma believed that all obstacles had been overcome."
Russian justice is currently undergoing massive reform, spearheaded by President Dimitry Medvedev, himself a lawyer. New appeal courts across the country, swifter access to justice for citizens in their hometowns and less bureaucratic delays are among the aims of the reform.
Human rights activists demand justice over Estemirova case
Nazi death camp trial: Ukraine's politicians defend war crime suspect
Let the oil flow
Yushchenko brings Stalin to court over genocide
Will Kyrgyzstan's unrest change the political situation in the country?
Former Kyrgyz president charged with mass murder and polygamy in absentia
European Court decision on WWII veteran– attempt to rewrite history
Medvedev wants courts' work to be more effective
A Tweet too far: US editor latest victim of Internet Inquisition
UN Court rules Kosovo independence is legal


A crash on the M2 heading towards Belfast is causing rush hour delays.
Emergency services have been called to the Rathbeg junction on the M2 Belfast bound, between junction 7 and 6, to reports of a crash.
Police confirmed they have arrived on the scene following the crash at 7.45am.
It is not known how many vehicles are involved, but no one is believed to have been injured.
Delays are expected as a result.


OE provided design engineering, construction management and inspection services for the City of Diamond Bar's Residential Area 2 and Arterial Zone 1 Road Maintenance Project. This project included a total of 14.5 centerline miles of residential, collector and arterial streets. The scope of work entailed rehabilitating the roadway using primarily slurry seal and chip seal methods. In areas of extreme degradation, an asphalt overlay or full width grind and replacement was recommended depending on funding availability. To provide a complete and accurate design, OE walked each proposed roadway to note necessary localized AC removal and replacement patches, damaged curb & gutter and uplifted or non-ADA compliant sidewalks. Our comprehensive field survey included correlating work items with site photographs to ensure the full scope of work was identified. OE recommended the best total rehabilitation method based on existing field conditions and available project budget. OE was also required to coordinate with Caltrans and acquire the encroachment permit. The permit was acquired before bids were opened in order to incorporate the Permit requirements into the bid documents. Our Construction Management and Inspection team then carried the project through the construction phase. During construction, one of the areas involved was within Caltrans Right of Way, and as a result required OE to coordinate with Caltrans.


What about my retirement accounts in bankruptcy?
Alpharetta: What about my retirement accounts in bankruptcy?
Question: I live in Alpharetta and need to file a chapter 7 because I have gotten into too much debt. My business failed and my wife lost her job. We used credit cards all of the time and I took out personal loans that I can't afford. I was buying everything on credit when I ran out of cash. I even put business expenses on my personal credit card because I couldn't get a business loan from a bank.
After I got into a fight with my neighbor in my subdivision and broke my arm I had to go to the hospital. Now the hospital is suing me for the emergency room visit. I have all sorts of doctor bills, from the radiologist to the orthopedist.
I need to know if I can keep my retirement accounts. Do they count the money in my retirement accounts for the purposes of bankruptcy? Am I not going to be able to file a chapter 7 bankruptcy because I have over $100,000 in retirement accounts? I have an IRA and a 401 (k).
Answer: Retirement accounts will not factor into the chapter 7. We have seen clients with very large sums of money in retirement accounts that were able to file a chapter 7 bankruptcy. Employer-sponsored plans like 401(k)'s and 403(b)'s have long been excluded from an individual's bankruptcy estate.
IRA's are protected from bankruptcy as well, due to the provisions of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCA). IRA holders facing bankruptcy can shield their IRA assets from creditors.
Let our vast experience and knowledge work for you. Need to speak with an Alpharetta bankruptcy lawyer? Call us and let's discuss your options. You can speak with a highly-regarded bankruptcy attorney in Alpharetta at any time.
We believe that everyone is entitled to a fresh financial start. The Sherman Law Group will help you navigate the system. Let our experience as a Magistrate Judge, Assistant Attorney General and as a Senior Assistant County Attorney work for you! Call us at 678-215-4106.


Hello everyone and welcome to our new blog! Here you will find anything from wedding flower arrangement ideas, industry information, factoids and other interesting tidbits to help make your wedding flower arrangement the best in WNY.
Being Buffalo's premier florist for floral arrangement, we've been asked to service the Royal Family to weddings in New York State and Canada. From small, simple bouquets to big beautiful arrangements that will wow your guests, your imagination is our design when it comes to wedding flower arrangements in Buffalo.
So check back and see what we can do for you. From photos to interesting articles we've come across, this blog will be informative and creative to make your imagination wonder, then make your a beautiful flower arrangement come to life!
Is there a wedding in your future?
What's tending in 2015 Wedding Flowers?


text:
package gobject

/*
#include <glib-object.h>
#include <gobject/gvaluecollector.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

gint __G_PARAM_MASK = G_PARAM_MASK;
gint __G_PARAM_STATIC_STRINGS = G_PARAM_STATIC_STRINGS;
gint __G_PARAM_USER_SHIFT = G_PARAM_USER_SHIFT;
gint __G_SIGNAL_FLAGS_MASK = G_SIGNAL_FLAGS_MASK;
gint __G_SIGNAL_MATCH_MASK = G_SIGNAL_MATCH_MASK;
GType __G_TYPE_FLAG_RESERVED_ID_BIT = G_TYPE_FLAG_RESERVED_ID_BIT;
gint __G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_MAX = G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_MAX;
gint __G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_SHIFT = G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_SHIFT;
gint __G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_FIRST = G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_FIRST;
gint __G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_LAST = G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_LAST;
gint __G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_FIRST = G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_FIRST;
gint __G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_LAST = G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_LAST;
gint __G_TYPE_RESERVED_USER_FIRST = G_TYPE_RESERVED_USER_FIRST;
gint __G_VALUE_COLLECT_FORMAT_MAX_LENGTH = G_VALUE_COLLECT_FORMAT_MAX_LENGTH;
gint __G_VALUE_NOCOPY_CONTENTS = G_VALUE_NOCOPY_CONTENTS;
*/
import "C"

var (
	PARAM_MASK                      = C.__G_PARAM_MASK
	PARAM_STATIC_STRINGS            = C.__G_PARAM_STATIC_STRINGS
	PARAM_USER_SHIFT                = C.__G_PARAM_USER_SHIFT
	SIGNAL_FLAGS_MASK               = C.__G_SIGNAL_FLAGS_MASK
	SIGNAL_MATCH_MASK               = C.__G_SIGNAL_MATCH_MASK
	TYPE_FLAG_RESERVED_ID_BIT       = C.__G_TYPE_FLAG_RESERVED_ID_BIT
	TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_MAX            = C.__G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_MAX
	TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_SHIFT          = C.__G_TYPE_FUNDAMENTAL_SHIFT
	TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_FIRST         = C.__G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_FIRST
	TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_LAST          = C.__G_TYPE_RESERVED_BSE_LAST
	TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_FIRST        = C.__G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_FIRST
	TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_LAST         = C.__G_TYPE_RESERVED_GLIB_LAST
	TYPE_RESERVED_USER_FIRST        = C.__G_TYPE_RESERVED_USER_FIRST
	VALUE_COLLECT_FORMAT_MAX_LENGTH = C.__G_VALUE_COLLECT_FORMAT_MAX_LENGTH
	VALUE_NOCOPY_CONTENTS           = C.__G_VALUE_NOCOPY_CONTENTS
)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Free Printable: Filipino Syllables Dice
DOWNLOADABLE, GOOGLY GOOEYS, HOMESCHOOLING, parenting, PRINTABLE, PRINTING
The Googly studio/house has started to look like a pre-school recently with Riley homeschooling but then again, it's somewhat always looked like a happy (adult version) nursery! Aside from bright colors, we have a collection of illustrated children's books...
Instagram Story Templates: About Me
INSTAGRAM STORY TEMPLATES, DESIGN, DOWNLOADABLE, instagram
We've been wanting to play around with more downloadables at the Googly HQ but our projects snowballed during the last quarter of 2018 so this project got parked for a while. But that's done and we're finally releasing the first batch of our...
DIY Pompom and Tassel Keychains
CRAFTING, DIY
Here at the Googly Gooeys HQ, we love a great excuse to craft and experiment with materials. This time, we've been eyeing pompoms and tassels so we decided to make them from scratch using these colorful Art Attack yarns! If you're curious as to how we made them, you...
Cooking with Kids Easy Hotcake Recipe
FOOD, GOOGLY GOOEYS, HOW TO, tips
If there's one thing that Riley has been fascinated about since he was a baby, it's food. At just a few months old, he'd wake up to the smell of sautéed garlic in the kitchen. He loves to watch people cooking, be it his dad at home, the chefs stretching noodles in...
How to Make Ombre Hotcakes
It's no secret that we love color and food so it's been a long dream of ours to put the two together. We didn't realize that our little wish would come true soon when we met Elle Jay Orbase (aka Pancake Warrior on Youtube) and the Maya Hotcake Team!...


I am going to render a normal conversation that often happens when I talk about seaweed and what I do.
– So, you work with seaweed. Nice! What do you do with it?
– Well, among other things I try to cross different species with one another in order to understand how speciation occurs.
-That sounds interesting. When does the seaweed bloom, then? Or….does it have flowers?
-Nope, it has eggs and sperm just like us. Bladderwrack and narrow wrack have male and female plants and actually have an almost identical lifecycle to humans.
-It has eggs and sperm?! But…is it an animal, then?
Suddenly you realize that what you learned during biology class in school was just a rough cut, simplified picture of reality. Nature and evolution is so much more than that, with more imagination and concepts than we humans are able to name.
I think it is fantastic that algae, some of the planet's first living organisms, have used eggs and sperm for a long time. Maybe longer even than humans have been around. A flick on the nose at us when we think we are evolutionarily advanced.
Here's a video of how eggs from bladderwrack start spinning by all the sperm swimming around them, hoping to fertilize. Beautiful!
It is SUCH an advantage to have access to an ice breaking ship when one works with seaweed.
Mid-March is unfortunately not always full of sun, birdsong and warm spring temperatures.
On March 18th, we wrwe out at the Askö laboratory to do a reading of some experiments that have been out in the sea over winter.
With a lilttle help from the ice breaking R/V AURELIA and skipper Eddie, I could reach one of the sites, located just south of the boathouse.
The seaweed has not suffered from the cold winter, but was in good shape. When I lifted the "weedbeds" up onto the ice, lots and lots of animals swam out. Small crustaceans, gastropods and caddis worms a plenty, all of them have spent the winter in the seaweed.
On Thursday, you can join us under the surface and experience what it is like to scuba dive WITHOUT GETTING WET OR COLD!
How on Earth will that be possible?
On Thursday 21st we will have a sneak start on World Water Day! Come to Aquaria and join the BalticSeaWeed blog, who will get into the water to check on a seaweed experiment. You can also help feeding the animals at Aquaria and get answers to everything you've always wanted to know about fish, and much, much more.
The program (in Swedish) is HERE, and the press release from Stockholm Universitety (also in Swedish) is HERE.
Are you interested in the history of sunken ships? Do you dream of finding chests of treasure in the sea? Or are you interested in finding out what jobs includes working under preassure (2-5 bar)?
On May 4th, the exhibition Among treasures and wrecks opens at The Museum of Work in Norrköping, Sweden.
Here, you can take part of experiences and everyday-life from seven divers with different connections to diving; a rescue diver, a freediver, a sport diver, a marine biologist, a marine archeologist, a construction diver and an underwater photographer.
The exhibition is open until September 15th.
The BalticSeaWeed blog is, of course, represented!
This year World Water Week in Stockholm takes place during September 1-6, so mark the date in your calendar.
The World Water Week organizers are now looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help them manage all the 2013 World Water Week sessions!
If this is something you would like to do, click on the link above and submit your interest.


text:
Uganda Local Government Association Vs Kibira & 4 Ors (LABOUR DISPUTE APPEAL No. 026 OF 2016) [2018] UGIC 23 (12 January 2018);
IN THE INDSUTRIAL COURT OF UGANDA AT KAMPALA
LABOUR DISPUTE APPEAL No. 026 OF 2016
(ARISING FROM LABOUR DISPUTE No. 023 of 2016
UGANDALOCAL GOV'T ASSOCIATION………………………………….CLAIMANT
KIBIRA VINCENT AND 4 OTHERS…………………………………….RESPONDENT
1. Hon. Chief Judge Ruhinda Asaph Ntengye
2. Hon. Lady Justice Linda Tumusiime Mugisha
Mr. Ebyau Fidel
Mr. F. X. Mubuuke
Ms. Harriet NganziMugambwa
This is an appeal from the decision of a Labour Officer sitting at Kampala central in KCCA/RUB/LC/023/2016.
The background of the appeal is that Kibira Vincent and four others were employees of the appellan at contractual terms which were subject to renewal and were in fact renewed at various times. Consequently as a result of restructuring the respondents employment was terminated.
They complained to the Labour officer that the termination was not in accordance with the restructuring package contained in the staff Regulations (termination grant) and the Human Resources Manual and prayed for various remedies. The Labour Officer decreed that:
The Respondent unfairly terminated the contracts of the 2nd, 3rd and 5thcomplainants while the 4th complainant's contract was fairly terminated.
The Respondent is hereby ordered to pay Ugx. 57,447,483/= as gratuity to the complainants.
The complainants are not entitled to payment for eliminated posts downsizing and that claim is dismissed.
The 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th complaints are entitled to termination grant and the Respondent should pay them sum of Ugx. 137,746,950/= as termination grant.
The Respondent should pay Ugx. 1,400,000/= as repatriation costs to 1st, 2ndand 3rd complainants and transport allowance of Ugx. 600,000/= to the 4th and 5th complainants.
The Claim of NSSF remittance by the Respondent should be addressed to N.S.S.F and the same is dismissed in Labour office.
The claim by the 3rd and 5th complainant for untaken leave is hereby dismissed and the claim by the 1st, 2nd and 4th complainants is allowed and the respondent should pay Ugx. 5,767,827/= in accordance with section 54(5) of the Employment Act 2006.
The claim by the 2nd respondent for acting allowance is allowed partially and the respondent is ordered to pay Ugx. 4,088,268/= as outstanding acting allowance.
The respondent should pay severance allowance in the sum of Ugx. 42,721,300/= to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th complainants.The claim for severance allowance by the 4th complainant is dismissed as he was fairly terminated.
The respondent should pay Ugx. 6,020,718/= as payment in lieu of notice to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th complainants.The claim by the 4th complainant is hereby dismissed as he was given adequate notice.
The respondent should pay Ugx. 9,420,375/= to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th complainants as damages for unfair termination.The 4th complainant's claim is dismissed as he was fairly terminated.
The question of salary loan repayment due to the DFCU Bank that cannot be handled by this Labour Office and it is accordingly referred to the industrial court for the 2nd and 3rd complainants only.
The respondent is hereby ordered to prepare appropriate certificates of service and file them in this office for the complainant's collection within 5 days from date of the award.
No order is made with regard to interest and costs.
The total award given amounts to Ugx. 265,212,923/= (Uganda shillings two hundred sixty five million two hundred twelve thousand nine hundred twenty three only).
The appellants were not satisfied with this decision and hence the appeal.
The memorandum of appeal contained the following grounds of appeal:
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he held that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Complaints/Respondents were wrongfully terminated from employment by the Appellant awarding damages thereof.
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he awarded UGX 57,447,483/= as gratuity to the Complainants/Respondents.
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he awarded a termination grant in the sum of UGX 137,746,950/= to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, the 4th and 5th Complaints/Respondents.
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he awarded repatriation costs in the sum of UGX 1,400,000/= to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Complainants/ Respondents and transport allowance in the sum of 600,000/= to the 4th and 5th Complaints/Respondents.
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he awarded UGX 5,767, 826/= to the 1st, 2nd and 4th Complainant/Respondent as untaken leave against the Appellant.
That the Labour Officer erred in law when he awarded UGX 42,721,300/= to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th Complaint/respondents as severance allowance.
That the Labour officer erred in law when he awarded UGX 6,020,718/= as payment in lieu of notice to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th complainants.
The respondent filed a cross appeal which contained the following grounds:
The labour officer erred in law when he failed to evaluated evidence on record regarding payment for eliminated posts/downsizing in respect of 2nd, 3rd and 4th cross appellant.
The labour officer erred in law when he failed to refer the question damages due to the 2ndand 3rdcomplainants to the Industrial court and instead awarded compensatory orders.
The labour officer erred in law when he failed to award interest on gratuity due to the cross appellant.
On ground No.1 of the appeal mentioned above, counsel for the appellant argued that the termination of the respondent was fair and lawful. He referred to the contract of the 1st respondent and argued that a renewal of the same constituted a whole new contract independent of the former and that therefore a notice of 3 months was sufficient since the contract started to run from the latest renewal and therefore the termination was lawful.
Referring to the contract of the said respondent, counsel argued that, the contract commencing on 20/05/2015 did not attract gratuity as confirmed by a letter on page 126 of the record of Appeal and this made the contract independent of all the previous contracts involving the second respondent and therefore 1 months' notice was sufficient making termination lawful.
For the third respondent, counsel argued that the contract was for less than 1 year and therefore one month's notice was sufficient making the termination lawful.
According to counsel for the appellants, the 4th respondent's contract was effected on 20/2/2015 and termination was on 29/4/2016 subject to 2 months' notice that was issued on 01/3/2016 and acknowledged by the 4th respondent in examination in chief.
According to counsel, the fifth respondent's contract was not renewed and as such there was no unfair termination. He relied on section 2 of the Employment Act and Joseph Kibuuka & others Vs Bank of Uganda L.D.C 184/2014.
In reply counsel for the respondents argued that the first, fourth and fifth respondents were not subject to arguments in ground No.1 since the said ground never envisaged these respondents and the Labour officer never held that they were lawfully terminated.
Fortunately in rejoinder counsel for the appellant agreed with this submission. On perusal of the proceedings we find that indeed the labor officer never held that the 1st respondent was unfairly terminated.
The decree against which the appeal lies in paragraph 1 states that the 2nd, 3rd and 5th complainants were unfairly terminated while the 4th complainant was fairly terminated.
We therefore agree that the submissions in ground 1 regarding 1st, and 4th respondents are not applicable and therefore we shall not dwell on them.
As to the 5th respondent, the appellant in his rejoinder did not reply to the contention that the memorandum of appeal in the 1st ground did no allege that the said 5th respondent had been held to have been unlawfully terminated and that therefore counsel was precluded from submitting on the same point.
On perusal of the contract of the 5th respondent we find that her contract of 14th March 2013 ran from 7th Jan 2012 to 7th Jan 2014 and her contract of 8th Jan 2014 was up to 8th Jan 2016. Surprisingly there appears to be an addendum to the contract of 8th Jan 2014 that attempts to reduce the duration of the contract by announcing its commencement date to be 20th October 2013 reducing the contract of I4th March 2012 by one year. Although both parties singed this addendum, we do not think it is enforceable for it is illegal in the sense that it purports to at the same time amend the previous contract which had ended.
Consequently both the addendum and the letter purporting to reject renewal of the contract have no legal basis. Her contract was to end in Jan 2016 and the Labour officer was right in holding that the respondent's letter requiring her to handover by 31/12/2015 amounted to a termination of employment.
It was argued on behalf of the appellants that the 2nd respondent's contracts were different and could not be construed to constitute a continuous employment period to which the respondent disagreed by stating that there existed continuous employment for over 10 years in respect to the 2nd respondent.
On perusal of the contracts of the 2nd respondent it is clear that she had a succession of contracts executed after a specific period mentioned in the said contracts before renewal by signing successive contracts.
Section 58 of the Employment Act provides for compulsory issuance of a notice period before termination of employment. Although each of the contracts were from the same employers, it is our opinion that each of the contracts had specific terms and conditions.
We agree with the submission of counsel for the appellant that upon expiry each of the contracts would be complete and renewal implied a new contract of employment with different terms.
However, we are positive that continuous service under section 83 of the Employment Act has very little, if at all, to do with notice periods under section 58 of the same Act.
Section 58 (1) provides
"A contract of service shall not be terminated by an employer unless he or she gives notice to the employee, except
a) …………………………………….
b) ……………………………………..
Section 58(3) provides:
The notice required to be given by an employer or employee under this section shall be
c) ……………………………………..
d) Not less than 3 months where the service is ten years or more.
Subject to the provisions of this section "continuous service" means an employee's period of uninterrupted service with the same employer".
"There shall be a rebuttable presumption that the service of an employee with an employer shall be continuous, whether or not the employee remains in the same job.
We do not subscribe to the view that notices specified in section 58 of the Employment Act have a bearing to the continuity of service as prescribed in section 82 and 83 of the same Act. This is because section 58 specifically deals with "contract of service" and therefore the notice period provided there under relates to a "contract of service".
On the other hand, section 82 and 83 deal with a period of uninterrupted "service in the employment of the same employer".
Our understanding of section 82 & 83 is that the legislature intended to clarify not only categories of employees entitled to certain benefits such as gratuity, severance allowance, pension and any other schemes but also the basis of calculating the same benefits once they arose.
Consequently it is our opinion that section 58 applies to specific contracts as opposed to sections 82 and 83 which apply to the whole period of employment.
In the instant case, as already intimated each of the successive contracts was distinct from the other with specific terms and conditions. The terms of a previous contract could therefore not be imported into the subsequent contract. Therefore the notice period under each of the contracts was as provided for under section 58 as per the said contract. Therefore the last contract having been on 17/02/2015 for 3 years, in accordance with section 58, he was entitled to not less than 1 month of notice. The appellant was therefore justified to grant the 2nd respondent 1 months' notice.
The Labour officer in our view erred in law when he failed to separate the contracts and instead held that the 2nd respondent had served for 10 years and 11 months and therefore entitled to 3 months' notice. This finding is hereby set aside.
The same applies to the 3rd respondent where the Labour officer failed to separate contracts and like in respect to the 2nd respondent construed the contract to constitute the whole period of service.
The third ground of appeal was that the Labour officer erred in awarding Ugx. 57,447,483/= as gratuity to the respondents. It was the submission of the appellant that the appellant could not pay gratuity and termination grant separately since the two were one and the same in accordance with regulation 34 of the staff regulations (page 44). He strongly argued that the 2nd and 4th respondent's contracts did not provide for gratuity (pages 126 and 245 of the record of appeal).
In reply, counsel for the respondent argued that regulation No. 35.2 provided clearly for termination grant and that this was distinct from gratuity.
Regulation 35.2 of the staff regulations provides:
"On leaving the service of the ULGA, a termination grant calculated at 15% of the annual gross salary times the number of years in the service of the association as follows:
For staff who have been confirmed (inviting) and hold such contracts the grant is based on the total full months/years of service.
For staff on probation, the probation period is disregarded. Gratuity eligibility begins with the full month of service after probation".
While considering the issue as to whether the claimants were entitled to termination grant, the Labour officer considered, rightly in our view, the pleadings of both the claimants and the respondent and observed, rightly, that there was a contradiction in the evidence and pleadings of the respondent as to whether termination grant was due after or before an employee was confirmed in service. He properly evaluated the evidence as to whether the claimants were entitled to termination grant under the above regulation and came to a right conclusion that they were so entitled.
Although at first one's impression might be that the termination grant is (and was meant to be) gratuity, on internalizing the above provision together with the various contracts engaging the respondents, one wonders as to why provision relating to gratuity in the contracts are not in tandem with the regulation 35 above sited.
For example, contrary to regulation 35, the contract of respondent No. 3, Hailen Jagimere Opoya of 01/08/2005 provides that the employer shall pay gratuity of 15% of annual basic salary for each year of service on annual basis except when she was dismissed.
Unlike under regulation 35, where termination grant is calculated taking into consideration the total number of years the employee has been in service, gratuity of respondent No.3, is to be payable per year worked. In our considered opinion, the framers of both provisions intended that they operate separately to honor those serving the appellant twice – for long service and also for service not less than 1 year. As one peruses all the contracts, gratuity is due per year for all of the respondents.
Accordingly, we do not accept the submission of the appellant that termination grant and gratuity were one and the same. Termination grant was almost the equivalent of severance allowance provided for under section 87 of the Employment Act which is payable separately from gratuity except that severance will only be payable in certain circumstances which are different from those provided for under regulation 35 above sited. We form the opinion that the failure of the appellant to harmonize provisions relating to gratuity in the various contracts with regulation 35, meant that the respondent intended that both provisions operate separately.
We have looked at regulation 34 which the appellant in submission claimed that it uses the term "gratuity" and "grant" interchangeably. The regulation deals with appeals and nowhere in the regulation are these words used at all.
For the above reasons, the third ground fails.
The second ground was that the Labour officer erred to have awarded Ugx. 54,447,483/= as gratuity.
The appellant did not dispute the fact that the respondents are entitled to gratuity (except 2nd and 4th respondents). The only issue related to the calculation of the same. He argued that payments to the respondents had varied overtime and that therefore the calculations made by the Labour officer were wrong in law and should be revised.
In reply, counsel for the respondent argued that the Labour officer having discussed the quantum payable to the respondents, the appellants did not in any way provide reasons to justify the variation. We have perused the record at pages 442 -447 detailing evidence evaluation of the Labour officer on which quantum each of the respondents was entitled. The appellants do not seem to offer alternative methods of calculating the quantum and in submission, counsel for the appellant merely stated that the appellants were entitled to the amounts as the legal officer had filed in reply to the complaint before the Labour officer. It was this very reply together with the complaint that the Labour officer discussed and came to a conclusion that he did. In the absence of a submission that the Labour officer should have reached a different decision, this court has no reason not to uphold the decision of the Labour officer. Merely stating that this court should take the reply to the complaint relating to gratuity and ignore the complaint as it was filed, without any justification is not acceptable.
In paragraph 6 of the reply to the complaint, the appellant claimed that each of the responds were entitled to certain amounts and attached records. In assessing the evidence, the Labour officer looked at these records and made conclusions.
We are not convinced by the submission of counsel that the Labour Officer's assessment of the records was wrong.
Although counsel for the appellant submitted that that the 2nd and 4th respondents were not entitled to gratuity, he at the same time stated that Ugx. 19,788,879/= and Ugx. 8,505,000/= was due respectively. This from counsel for the appellant, got us in a state of uncertainty as to what the appellant exactly meant. Accordingly for the above reasons, ground No. 2 fails.
Ground No. 4 related to repatriation costs. Counsel for the appellant argued that the addresses of the respondents showed Kampala and the appellant officers were in Kampala. This being the case, according to counsel, the respondents were not entitled to repatriation.
In reply counsel for the respondent submitted that whereas while working for the appellant the respondents were residing in Kampala, their respective residences were outside Kampala.
Section 39(1)(c) of the Employment Act states:
"An employee recruited for employment at a place which is more than 100km from his or her home shall have the right to be repatriated at the expense of the employer…………………….."
We shall look at each of the claimants' circumstances before determining whether any of them was entitled to repatriation.
When the Labour officer was considering this ground of appeal he stated:
"I have considered section 39 of the employment Act with regard to repatriation. Section 39(3) of the Employment Act places an obligation on the respondent to repatriate the 1st , 2nd and 3rd complainants because they had served the respondent for 10 years and above………".
The implication of the above statement, in our understanding, is that the obligation of the employer to repatriate the employee arises only when the employee has worked for the employer for 10 years and above.
Section 39(3) provides
"Where an employee has been in employment for at least 10 years he or she shall be repatriated at the expense of the employer irrespective of his or her place of recruitment."
Our understanding of the above section is that in the case of an employee who has served 10 years or more unlike his/her contemporaries who served less than 10 years, the distance between his/her home residence and the place of work would not matter in determining whether or not repatriation was applicable to him. Those that served less than 10 years would have to prove that their home residences were within more than 100kms before being granted repatriation.
We take cognizance of the fact that although employees in Kampala may be resident in Kampala, their home areas may not be located in Kampala. Most employees in Kampala or in other major towns live in rented premises having moved from their homes to towns for employment opportunities. Nonetheless there are still employees whose homes are in the very towns where they are employed in which case before an employee is declared a beneficiary under section 39 of the Employment Act, it is important that the court is satisfied that unless he/she has served for 10 years and above, his/her home is over 100kms from the place of work.
The only evidence that the Labour officer relied upon to grant repatriation was the labour complaint that showed the home of 1st , 2nd and 3rd respondents as Sembabule, Busia and Kanungu respectively. We have perused the record and we find that all the respondents' addresses show that they were based in Kampala. There is no evidence whatsoever to show that any one of the respondents had a home outside Kampala, except one Ainomujuni Godwine, 4th respondent, whose address on appointment was shown to be Bushenyi District Local Government.
This being the case, unless one had worked for at least 10 years, except the 4th respondent, none of the respondent was entitled to repatriation.
In our considered opinion the forth respondent will be paid Ugx. 500,000/=. The orders relating to payment of repatriation in respect to the rest of the respondents are hereby set aside, except those who had served for at least 10 years who will be paid Ugx. 100,000/= since they are all Kampala based.
The 5th ground relates to grant of leave allowance to 1st, 2nd, 4th respondents. We agree with the submission of counsel for the appellant that as was held in OTHIENO VS UBC CS 07/2013, for a claim of compensation to be upheld the employee must prove that she or he requested for leave and was asked not to take it.
As this court held in KANGAHO SILVER VS ATTONEY GENERAL in D.L.C.276/2014, whereas going on leave is an employee's right, such right can only be exercised by application to the employer who may approve it or postpone the same to a given date. It is only when the employer refuses to grant the same that the employee is entitled to payment in lieu of leave.
In the instant case evidence is lacking to show that any of the respondents applied and was denied leave. This ground of appeal succeeds and the orders of the Labour officer are set aside.
The 6th ground relates to grant of severance allowance.
The unlawful termination allegations in this case were hinged on the fact that the respondents were given insufficient notice. We have already held that the notices given for the respondents was sufficient in accordance with their running contracts.
Under section 87 of the Employment Act, severance allowance is only awardable under circumstances provided for there under. One of the circumstances is unfair dismissal. The services of the respondent were terminated as a result of restructuring which is not a factor considered under section 87.
As far as the 5th respondent was concerned, we have held that her contract was to end on 7th Jan 2016 and that the letter requiring her to hand over by 31/12/2015 amounted to a termination of employment.
As we have already indicated, severance allowance under section 87 above mentioned is almost equivalent to the termination grant under the staff regulations of the appellant. The grant just like severance, is meant to cater for the inconvenience suffered by the employee as a result of the employer severing the employee-employer relationship.
The 5th respondent has already benefited under the staff regulations. Her contract was only less than 6 days remaining. In the circumstances we decline to grant an order for severance allowance.
Consequently since the basis of unlawful dismissal did not exist in the case of 1st, 2nd and 3rd respondents, and the 5th respondent had only 6 days to complete her contract, no severance allowance was due. This ground of appeal succeeds and the orders of Labour officer are hereby set aside.
The 7th ground relates to payment in lieu of notice.
Since we have already held that the notice given to the respondents was sufficient, automatically this ground succeeds as there was no basis for the Labour officer to award it. The orders for payment in lieu of notice are set aside.
In the cross appeal, the first ground was that the Labour officer erred in law when he failed to evaluate evidence on record regarding payment for eliminated posts/downsizing in respect of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th cross appellants.
There is no doubt in our minds that the termination of employment of the respondents was as a result of restructuring that was taking place within the respondent organization. Both counsel agreed on this fact. The only contention is the application of paragraph 4.9(c) of the Human Resource Manual which according to counsel for the cross appellant provides:
"In the event of staffing reduction, ULGA shall for staff on contract pay 25% of the contract sum and for temporary staff; they shall receive three month's pay in lieu of notice."
With due respect to whoever drafted the contracts of the respondents, whoever drafted the human Resource Manual and whoever drafted the staff regulations, we form the opinion that they ought to have harmonized each of the provisions therein relating to terms and contentions of service of the respondents. Earlier on in this award we pointed out the effect of non-harmonization of the provision relating to gratuity in the contracts of the respondent with the provision relating to termination grant in the staff regulations. Given these two provisions, the question is: what was the purpose of paragraph 4.9(c) sited above in the Human Resource Manual? What is the purpose of providing payment in lieu of notice in the Human Resource Manual when it is already provided for in the contract? We agree with submission of counsel for cross respondent that employers are at liberty to restructure the organizations in a bid to cope with modern methods of running the same organizations. We are not convinced that the framers of paragraphs 4.9(c) of the Human Resource manual intended that even when the staff was reduced as a result of a non-contestable restructuring process, the respondent would be liable to pay under the said paragraph. In reference to the same point, the only witness for the cross appellant stated as counsel for the appellant quoted him
"Yes I am trained as a lawyer. True, the posts were not eliminated. Letter dated 1st march 2014 is read by the witness. "That eliminated the post you have been holding as a procurement officer". No, post was eliminated. After restructuring the staff reduced."
It seems to us that the above testimony is so contradicting that one may not be sure if the staff reduced after restructuring or if they kept the same number but with duo responsibilities. This is because the witness says that the posts were not eliminated but at the same time he says that the post of Procurement Officer held by one of the respondents was eliminated. That is the reason the Labour officer (as quoted by counsel for the cross appellant said:
"2nd, 3rd and 4th complainants
The respondent argued that there was no staff downsizing but instead the number of staff recruited increased in number though there was no evidence ever adduced to support this allegation. Counsel argued that the staff downsizing is different from restructuring. I do not agree with the above reasoning. Downsizing is a form of restructuring. I have looked at the termination letter of this complainants and they clearly state that the posts that the complainants were holding were eliminated. However it is not clear from the pleadings and evidence available on record whether there was staff reduction. This evidence can be furnished by the respondent. In the absence of such evidence this officer disallows the claim. The complainants are not entitled to payment for eliminated posts/downsizing."
There were other provisions catering for the interests of the respondents (as already discussed in this award). For the above reasons, this ground fails.
The second ground of appeal in the cross appeal was that the Labour officer erred in law when he failed to refer the question of damages due to the 2nd and 3rd complainants to the Industrial Court and instead awarded minimal compensatory orders.
In his submission, the cross appellant prayed to the Labour officer to refer the matter to this court on the basis that the cross appellants had received less notice than they required and therefore deserved more compensation than the Labour officer could legally award.
As already discussed earlier in this award, the notice given was sufficient, although the Labour officer found it was insufficient. Therefore, failure to refer the matter to this court did not cause any injustice to the cross appellants. This ground fails.
The last ground in the cross appeal was that the Labour officer erred in law when he did not award interest on gratuity.
The award of interest or even costs has always been a matter of discretion by the presiding judicial officer although such discretion has to be exercised judiciously. Nothing in the Employment Act or in any other law privy to us gives power to a Labour officer to award interest. We find no reason to fault the labour officer for declining to grant this prayer. This ground therefore fails.
1. Hon. Chief Judge Ruhinda Asaph Ntengye ………………………………….
2. Hon. Lady Justice Linda Tumusiime Mugisha ………………………………….
Mr. Ebyau Fidel………………………………….
Mr. F. X. Mubuuke………………………………….
Ms. Harriet NganziMugambwa………………………………….
Dated: 12TH JAN 2018
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