Cathay Pacific has won a ruling
Cathay Pacific has won a ruling that it need not assess all second officers for promotion to junior first officer before it can hire one from outside. Overturning a ruling in the Labour Tribunal that Cathay had an obligation to do so, Court of First Instance judge Madam Justice Carlye Chu Fun-ling said the tribunal had erred in some legal points and that the matter should not only be viewed from the employee's perspective.
The judge wrote in her judgment that the employment contract stated that the airline had a right to decide when it needed to promote a second officer, which the tribunal had failed to take into account.
The appeal stemmed from a claim by Scott Williams, a second officer, who argued that Cathay had delayed his promotion by six months contrary to the terms of his employment and as a result he should be compensated for the difference in salary between the two positions.
After winning in the tribunal, Williams was to have received up to HK$270,000, withheld pending the decision of the appeal. As well as failing to get this money he was ordered yesterday to pay Cathay's legal costs in the appeal - lodged by the airline because, it said, it estimated there were about 150 similar cases.
A deputy presiding officer in the tribunal found that Cathay had an implied obligation to exhaust assessment of second officers before it began recruitment of a direct-entry first officer. The judge yesterday overturned the tribunal's finding that holding upgrade courses for junior first officers was not at the discretion of Cathay. She said the tribunal had wrongly found an implied obligation to assess junior officers first because it had failed to take into account another clause, which reserved a Cathay discretion on promotion.
The judge said: "I am unable to agree with the claimant's argument that the question of requirement should only be viewed from the employee's perspective."
The judge also overturned the tribunal officer's finding that Cathay had breached a contractual obligation by failing to arrange two assessments for Williams - a technical assessment and the upgrade-review-board assessment - because he was the next most senior second officer suitable for promotion in February 2008. The judge said the tribunal had come to this conclusion in the absence of evidence and through misunderstanding of evidence.
She said the tribunal had wrongly accepted a method that Williams used to show he was the next most senior person to be promoted