Kenyan subsidiary of the British multinational security services company headquartered in London, England, G4S has been slapped with a Sh3.2million bill as compensation claim by former employer who successfully sued the firm for wrongful dismissal from work over workplace romance.
The High Court awarded a former G4S Security Branch Operations Manager Sh3.2million for illegal termination from work.
Further, the court ruled that employers cannot prohibit romantic relationships or marriages between consenting employees.
In a judgment delivered by Justice James Rika, the court affirmed that workplace relationships should be allowed to take their natural course.
“It is irrational to outlaw matters of the heart. Employers should allow relationships to flourish, like Bill and Melinda Gates, while employees remain productive in their roles.” Justice Rika ruled.
Justice Rika declared that policies banning sexual relationships at work are unconstitutional, as they violate employees’ privacy rights protected under Article 31 of the Constitution.
He emphasised that romantic relationships are private matters.
G4S Security subsidiary in Kenya has gained notoriety in labour disputes.
In 2021, High Court in Nairobi slapped G4S with Sh10.6million bill for illegal dismissal of three employees from work as dues and compensation for unlawful termination from service.
While delivering the ruling, Lady Justice Hellen Wasilwa observed the summary dismissal was unlawful and ordered the firm to pay former employees Sarah Adhiambo, Caroline Wangari and Martin Mwangi as directed.
“G4s has failed to show that they adhered to the provisions of section 40 of Employment Act, which mandates employer to give notice to the employees on the intended redundancy.” Wasilwa ruled.
In April 2021 still, former G4S Human Resource Manager sued the company over alleged wrongful termination of his employment contract.
David Mutisya is now demanding Sh100 million in compensation after being dismissed in 2018.
He told the Labour Relations Court that his woes at the security firm started when he questioned opaque hiring of employees after working for the company for over two decades.
” We had people being employed without going through the prescribed process. When I challenged the process as the human resource manager, I was kicked out without any compensation even after serving the firm for 25 years.” Mutisya said.
Under the Kenyan law, it is a requirement that employers should provide equal opportunities without discrimination.
For expatriates, they should provide more specialised skilled tasks which Kenyans cannot perform.
The security firm has in the past been bedeviled by controversies over hiring process of staffers, non-compliance to minimum wage and alleged collusion in criminal activities notably money heists on transit.
In 2019, G4S staff were placed at the center of a brazen cash heist at the Barclays Bank of Kenya (BBK), now Absa automated teller machines after it emerged the bank had outsourced its key operations to an international private security firm, G4S.
According to preliminary police investigations, the security firm enjoys unlimited access to ATMs operations including maintainance, physical manning, loading of cash and storage of liquid cash is entirely controlled by G4S.
In this latest case, the ruling followed a lawsuit filed by a former G4S operations branch manager, who was terminated on allegations of sexually harassing a female junior employee.
The judge noted that preventing employees from pursuing romantic relationships would violate their right to be free from cruel and degrading treatment under Article 25(a) of the Constitution.
“There is nothing more degrading than an employer interfering in a consensual relationship between two adults.” The judge ruled.
The judge also said that if the relationship had led to a conflict of interest, G4S should have charged the claimant specifically for violating its conflict of interest policy.
However, the claimant was neither investigated nor dismissed for any such violation.
Additionally, the court criticized G4S’s sexual harassment policy, which required employees who marry to disclose their marriage to the company, with one spouse required to resign if the marriage took place after November 2020.
Justice Rika found that this policy further violated constitutional rights.
The former G4S manager had worked for the company since 2000, and his contract was terminated in December 2020, after 20 years of service.
The court noted that he was only eight years away from retirement and that G4S failed to provide a valid reason for his termination.
The court ruled the dismissal was unfair and awarded him compensation equivalent to 12 months’ salary, totalling Sh3,244,800.
The manager sued G4S in 2021, claiming that he had been employed as a management trainee in 2000 and promoted to regional operations manager in 2018. His contract was terminated on December 22, 2020, after accusations that he had influenced the transfer of a junior guard and made sexual advances toward her. He denied these claims, and after a DNA test initiated to determine if he had fathered the guard’s child proved negative, G4S still terminated his employment based on allegations of sexual harassment.
Justice Rika found that G4S had violated its own disciplinary procedures and the Employment Act.
Although the company maintained the manager’s termination was justified, the court concluded that G4S had failed to show any valid reason for the dismissal.
G4S had argued that the manager had engaged in a sexual relationship with the guard in 2016 and 2017, fathering her child and influencing her job transfer.
The company claimed that the guard lent the manager Sh200,000, which he failed to repay. Despite these allegations, the court ruled in favour of the manager, finding that the termination process was flawed.
