Compensation Awarded By The Industrial Tribunal | How Is This Changing And Why?

Maltese Legislation does not impose an obligation on the Industrial Tribunal (hereinafter 'Tribunal') to include its reasoning for why a certain decision was taken and why damages were liquidated at a certain amount. Over the years this has led to a lot of uncertainties since when one tries to analyse past cases of the Tribunal in order to attempt to identify a pattern in decisions, there appear to be no hard and fast rules upon which the decisions were taken.

This is in fact pointed out in the recent judgement of Michelina Bonnici vs Specialist Group Cleaners Limited¹, wherein the Court of Appeal noted that inferior courts are not obliged to include all the reasons which led them to taking such a decision and are only obliged to mention the main points which the court bases itself on. Chapter 452 of the Laws of Mata (Employment and Industrial Relations Act) states that the Tribunal need only indicate the factors taken into account before establishing compensation.