IOL News reports that a Labour Court judgment involving a Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) employee diagnosed with anxiety and depression has reinforced employers’ obligations to properly accommodate workers with health conditions before resorting to dismissal. The case centred on long-serving CPUT employee Ferose Samaai, who successfully challenged her dismissal, which occurred during a time she was battling poor mental health.
The judgment records that Samaai, who had worked at CPUT since 1996, was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in 2018. Her health challenges were later compounded by the amputation of a finger in 2021 and wrist surgery in 2023. She was summarily dismissed in the same year. Following her diagnosis, occupational therapist Al-Marie Botes conducted a series of assessments that found her anxiety and depression affected her productivity, workplace relationships and ability to cope with the demands of her role.
The reports recommended ongoing psychiatric treatment, psychological counselling, occupational therapy and regular engagement between management and the employee to identify appropriate workplace accommodation measures. However, the court found there was no evidence that further structured occupational therapy interventions or accommodation measures were undertaken after November 2022. Instead, CPUT initiated an incapacity enquiry in June 2023 that ultimately resulted in Samaai’s dismissal.
Judge Molatelo Makhura found that CPUT failed to properly investigate workplace accommodation and alternatives to dismissal before terminating Samaai’s employment, reviewing and setting aside part of a Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) award that had found her dismissal substantively fair.
The court ordered the university to pay her R497,948, equivalent to 11 months’ remuneration, in addition to one month’s compensation previously awarded for procedural unfairness. A key issue before the court was CPUT’s refusal to facilitate Samaai’s application for medical boarding once the incapacity process had begun.
The university argued it had already accommodated the employee over an extended period and that she had previously declined the medical boarding option. It also maintained that no suitable alternative position was available. Makhura rejected that approach, finding that employers have a legal obligation to investigate accommodation and alternatives during the incapacity process itself.
“The medical boarding procedure represents an obvious potential alternative to a dismissal, one that is required to be fully investigated before any decision to dismiss is taken,” the judge said.
The court found CPUT refused to facilitate or consider the application because management believed Samaai had previously declined the option and regarded the request as part of a pattern of manipulative conduct. “Those considerations do not constitute a valid basis for refusing to investigate a potential alternative to dismissal,” Makhura said.
The judgment also found the university could not rely on transfers that took place between 2015 and 2018 as evidence that it had accommodated Samaai because those moves predated both her incapacity enquiry and the medical conditions that formed the basis of her dismissal. Instead, the court held that employers must consider an employee’s condition during the relevant incapacity process by assessing the extent of the incapacity, whether reasonable accommodation is possible and whether alternatives to dismissal exist before terminating employment.
Finding that the CCMA commissioner had misapplied the legal principles governing incapacity dismissals, the Labour Court substituted the finding that the dismissal was substantively fair with one that it was substantively unfair. While declining to reinstate Samaai because of the strained relationship between the parties, the court held compensation was the appropriate remedy.
by Nicola Mawson