PHILIPSBURG–Nineteen employees of Merchants Market St. Maarten N.V., who were laid off in the wake of Hurricane Irma, reached out-of-court settlements with their employer on Tuesday.
On behalf of 20 workers in total, attorney-at-law Nerissa de la Rosa had filed for summary proceedings as the workers were dismissed without severance pay. To secure payment, De la Rosa had filed a request with the Court to place a lien on Merchant’s Market’s bank accounts in St. Maarten.
To prevent any lien from being placed on Merchants Market’s accounts, attorney Daniëlla Engelhardt and legal counsel for the company’s owners in Illinois, United States, Matt McEnery opened last-minute negotiations, “five minutes before the injunction hearing was to start” at 9:15am, De la Rosa said.
The Judge allowed parties 15 minutes to reach an agreement, but when parties gathered again before the Judge, Merchant Market’s legal representatives said they needed 20 more minutes to “add up the numbers.”
De la Rosa said later that a settlement had been reached, but added that the agreement still needed to be formalized in writing and some final calculations still needed to be made.
She said that all her clients agreed and were prepared to withdraw their cases.
She called for a postponement of the case until January 8, 2018, to work out the final details. The Judge, however, adjourned the hearing for only a few hours, until 2:30pm, to “hammer out” all details and to put these on paper.
Two of Merchants Market’s employees, Joseph Daniel and Bernard Celestine, represented their colleagues during Tuesday’s proceedings. Their lawyer explained that some of her clients had been employed by the company for many years.
“Some of them worked for the company for 20, or even 35 years,” De la Rosa said. Despite their long careers, their employer had put them out on the street without any form of payment.
“I threatened to seize the company’s assets in case they declined to pay severance. After Irma my clients were dismissed just like that. Merchants Market was the first company to lay off workers after Irma. In US-style, they wanted to dismiss them without any severance pay. But that cannot be. US-based companies must also adhere to St. Maarten’s labour laws where their St. Maarten-based workers are concerned,” De la Rosa explained.
Merchants Market is a large food-service distribution company with a warehouse in Florida and distribution facilities in St. Maarten, St. Thomas and St. Croix.
Located opposite Orange Grove Shopping Centre in Cole Bay, the company offers a wide range of fresh produce, meats, dairy, poultry, seafood, fruit and vegetables to hotels, restaurants and (super)yachts in St. Maarten, it is stated on the company’s website.
Around 2:45pm, parties informed the Judge that agreements had been reached on all but one employee. Parties called upon the Court to postpone the hearing of this case until January 12, 2013, as they expect to also come to an agreement where this person is concerned. The Judge granted the request.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/72035-merchants-market-workers-reach-last-minute-settlement
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