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Settlement of Labour Disputes under Cameroonian Labour Law

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 August 2018
Published date01 August 2018
Pages407-425
DOI10.3366/ajicl.2018.0239
INTRODUCTION

Labour law is one of the most important areas of law because it is the legal basis on which the majority of people earn their living. It therefore cuts across all walks of life as one must have exchanged labour services for wages or have been affected by industrial relations off-shoots like strikes.1 It should be mentioned here that this article is limited to private sector workers only. Therefore ‘employer(s)’ as used in this article refers to employer(s) of the private sector.

This area of the law principally involves three parties: workers, employers and sometimes the government.2 Each of these parties holds conflicting but legitimate interests which they ardently seek to pursue and defend. Like buyers, the employers want to buy labour services at the cheapest price possible; workers, on the other hand, like sellers, would want to sell at the highest price possible.3

To pursue and defend their respective interests, the parties tend to use diverse strategies like strikes, intimidation, redundancy, dismissal and lock-outs, to name but a few.4 The paradox is that, as diametrically opposed as they may be, they are bound to be labour disputes.5 This notwithstanding, they are compelled to live and work together for their mutual survival. Some of these strategies have very far-reaching effects on the society at large, and because of these, the government must step in to minimise the effects and subsequent impact on the society by enacting rules and regulations to guide their conduct.6

 THE CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT

The labour relationship has been compendiously styled the contract of employment.7 The contract of employment, like most legal concepts, has not been given a precise definition. However, this is far from saying that no definitions have been advanced directly or indirectly.

Section 23 of the Cameroon Labour Code of 19928 provides that, ‘a contract of employment shall be an agreement by which a worker undertakes to put his services under the authority and management of an employer against remuneration’. In other words ‘a contract of employment is a contract by which a person (worker) contracts to put his professional activity under the direction and authority of another person (employer) in return for remuneration.’9

Types of Contracts of Employment

By virtue of section 25(1) of the 1992 Labour Code of Cameroon a worker provides his services only in one of two ways which are: a specified or unspecified period, that is a contract of employment for a specified duration, and a contract of employment for an unspecified duration.

 A Contract of Employment for an Unspecified Duration

Section 25(1)(b) of the Labour Code defines a contract of an unspecified duration as one whose termination is not fixed in advance and which may be terminated at any time at the request of either the worker or the employer, provided that the prior notice referred to in section 3410 is given. This is the most common form of labour relations in Cameroon.11 The parties agree to be bound to each other for an indeterminate period which extends more or less into the future and, subject to retirement, may last the lifetime of the parties. This, however, is far from saying that it is a contract of employment for life because it contains certain principles inconsistent with that presupposition. These include the principle of unilateral termination and the principle of notice. The principle of unilateral termination is a discretion legally conferred on both the employer and worker to terminate the labour relationship at any time.12 The principle of notice implies that prior to termination of a contract of unspecific duration at any time by either party notice must be served. In Nformi & Sons v. Nkambe Area Cooperative Union Ltd,13 it was held that a worker who has been terminated and re-engaged several times needs a notice to terminate the contract of employment because a contract of specified duration which is renewed more than once – becomes a contract of unspecified duration.

 A Contract of Employment for a Specified Duration

Section 25(1)(a) of the Labour Code14 defines a contract of specified duration as one whose termination is fixed in advance by both parties. Here, three types of contracts of specified duration can be distinguished.

a contract whose termination is fixed in advance by the will of the parties – in other words, this entails the execution of a task whose termination is laid down in advance by the consent of the two parties;

a contract whose termination is subject to the occurrence of a future and certain event whose realisation does not depend exclusively on the will of the parties;

a contract concluded for the execution of a specified task or job.

 The objective here is to make sure that the worker can pin down the date of the termination of the contract with maximum certainty

Section 25 of the code15 shows the legislator's intention to avoid defining what a contract of specified duration is each time that uncertainty prevails. Only contracts whose termination is fixed in advance by the parties can be renewed. The duration of such a contract may not exceed a period of two years, renewable once.

 Termination of a Contract of Employment

The rights and obligations under a contract of employment maybe brought to an end in the same way as in the case of any other kind of contract – whether it is made for a specified or unspecified duration.16 A contract may thus be terminated by: (a) breach; (b) agreement; (c) frustration; (d) performance; (e) lapse of time; and (f) operation of law.17 Termination has been so defined to include any termination of the labour relationship by either the employer or the worker with or without notice or the expiration of a fixed-term contract.

Termination may arise from a series of causes or factors which may either be lawful or wrongful,18 having due regard to the particular circumstance of each case. It invariably gives rise to certain judicial and, above all, practical consequences depending on whether or not it was lawful and, sometimes, despite its legality or unfairness.

Naturally, many problems usually occur with respect to the unfair or wrongful termination of the contract.19 A look at the number of labour cases that come before the courts on the sole or main ground of wrongful dismissal will bear out this fact.

 LABOUR DISPUTES

A ‘labour dispute’ is defined as ‘a dispute (primarily) between employer and employee containing the terms and conditions of employment or between workers and workers.20 Section 29(1) of the Trade Union and Labour Relation Act of 1974 defines labour disputes as ‘any dispute between employers and workmen or between workmen and workmen which is connected with the employment or non-employment, or terms of employment’.

In Cameroon, the legislators have not yet given any definition to the term.21 Sections 131 and 137 of the recent Labour Code of 1992 merely state the courts which have jurisdiction to hear individual and collective disputes without specifying what constitutes a dispute. From the decisions of Cameroonian cases, it is, evident that Cameroonian courts apply the British definition in determining what a labour dispute really is.

Accordingly, based on the subject of a dispute, the definition could either relate to ‘employment or non-employment’, the ‘terms’ of employment or the conditions of work of any person. Thus, in respect of the subject of the dispute, either one or all of the other elements must be present. The purpose of defining a ‘labour dispute’ is to spell out what a dispute is and to examine the purpose of the dispute in order to reduce the rush of frivolous legal actions because it is an interference with the trade, business or employment of some other person or with the right of some other person to dispose of his capital or labour as he wishes.

Parties in Labour Disputes

The parties in labour disputes include the individual who could either be a worker22 or an employer, the trade union23 (labour), an employers’ association and the government.

The terms ‘individual workers’/‘individual employers’ is used in this article to mean either activities, or the individual, or the body who exercises the activities of production and distribution of goods and services on the one hand, and the activities of planning and regulating production and coordinating capital and labour on the other, but who are not members of any trade union or employers’ association.

A trade union and employers’ association refers to the coming together of workers and employers respectively to protect their interests.

Lastly, the government is the political organisation of a given society that has statutory authority to regulate the activities of all other groups in the country for the purpose of maintaining law and order, social justice and liberty.24

In fact, the government provides laws and regulations which ensure that the two parties directly involved play the game in accordance with the rules. Thus a labour dispute can either be between a worker and an employer, between an employer and an association, a trade union or another trade union or between an employers’ association and a trade union.25

 Classification or Types of Labour Disputes (Grievances)

Grievances or disputes can be classified into a number of general types, for example workers’ and employers’ grievances, individual and collective grievances, internal and external grievances and grievances over rights and those over interests.

Workers’ and Employers’ Grievances

Workers grievances have been classified as follows.

Wage Grievances

Wage grievances include demands for individual wage adjustment, complaints about job satisfaction and incentive systems, miscellaneous complaints about the miscalculation of pay and methods of payment.26 In Ngwa Charles Fru v. The Produce Marketing Board,27 the respondent, a worker of this defunct company, asked for a wage increase...

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