Summary
The University appealed orders regularising employees who had served for 15 to 30 years through placement or contractual arrangements. The Court had already confined notice to consequential benefits, leaving the question of law on regularisation open. Balancing the employees’ long service against the University’s financial burden, it limited actual retrospective benefits to three years before the writ petitions while preserving earlier notional benefits and continuity by reference to similarly situated employees.
Issues
- To what extent actual retrospective consequential benefits should accompany the regularisation left undisturbed in these appeals.
Held
- The Court declined to interfere with regularisation in the circumstances of the employees’ long service and issued notice only on consequential benefits. The question of law concerning regularisation was expressly kept open. (¶ 3)
- Actual retrospective consequential benefits were restricted to the three years preceding filing of the respective writ petitions. This balanced the employees’ lengthy service with the University’s financial burden. (¶ 4-5)
- Continuity of service and notional regularisation benefits remained available from the date on which similarly situated employees had been regularised. The restriction on actual payment did not remove that notional treatment. (¶ 4-5)
Result
Appeals partly allowed without costs. Actual retrospective consequential benefits limited to three years before the respective writ petitions; notional benefits and service continuity retained from the regularisation date of similarly situated employees.