High Court temporarily stops hearing of sacked KQ Engineers case

Employment and labor relations court have stayed proceedings of KQ Engineers following an appeal by the airline.

The stay is meant to allow court of appeal time to hear and determine the employer contention and protest against High Court order reinstating the engineers.

Justice Hellen Wasilwa heard that after the orders were issued, the complaining employees got reinstated but hours later got letters from the company ordering them to proceed on compulsory leave.

Further, the court heard that some of the employees in the suit are opting out of the case for reasons only well known to them.

The case which is at the High Court will be heard on 1st February 2018, as the Appellate Court is expected to hear the appeal soon.

This comes just two days after the court ordered the National carrier to reinstate 157 employees it sacked last month pending the hearing and determination of the case filed by the aggrieved workers.

In issuing the directive, Justice Hellen Wasilwa sided with employees stating it was unsafe for passengers to fly in planes that are not properly serviced.

“I am like any other person who uses flight to travel and I cannot risk using planes that are un-serviced since all the engineers and technicians have been sacked, I therefore order that KQ reinstates the sacked employees with immediate effect, ”ruled Wasilwa.

Kenya Airways lost about 80 engineers and technicians between January 2016 and February this year.

The technical department had earlier in the year staged a strike which saw the airline’s management increase salaries from March.

Kenya Airways claims technical assistants salaries were increased from Sh120,000 to Sh200,000 while production engineers saw the salaries increased to Sh340,000.

On 6th of this month the Employment and Labor Relations Court ordered Kenya Airways to refrain from replacing the engineers it sacked after it advertised the positions in the dailies.