One of the unusual industrial-relations issues to appear lately brings up possible obligations of employers in relation to employees when someone buys over the shares of a company and continues to run it with the original employees.

Under our legislation, as stakeholders know, the Industrial Relations Act, in Section 48 (3) states: "For the purposes of this section, any question whether a person is a successor or assignee of another shall be determined by the Court from all the circumstances in accordance with good conscience and the principles of good industrial relations practice and shall be binding…on any successors to, or in the case of an employer, assignees of the employer who entered into the first registered agreement with the recognised majority union.'

This makes it clear that where one company buys or otherwise takes over the ownership of another company, the second company takes over the certification of the recognised majority union and any collective agreement signed between the first company and the union.

The resultant relationship, with whatever problems or issues arise, will have to be sorted out between the new owner and the union.

In other words, if Gopaul Lands Ltd buys over the shares of Seapaul Enterprises Ltd, when Mr Seapaul Snr dies, or the bank closes it down for bankruptcy, or the second generation of Seapauls have moved to Canada and are not interested in keeping it going, the arrangement and relationships between company and union are carried on at a corporate level, because the union itself is a corporation, just as the company is. Often, providing Gopaul Lands takes over Seapaul Enterprises as a going concern, and it continues to operate in the same place, in the same way with the same employees, the employees may not even be aware the ownership has changed.

But, as events in the energy industry have shown us over recent years, it is not always that simple.

Somehow, legal tangles always arise when employees' rights under common law arise, because employees cannot be bought and sold along with machinery, stocks, acreage and other assets. They should have thought of that.

Illustrating this, a case arose some years ago - a generation or two, depending on how you divide up 20 years - when a foreign construction company got a contract to build a large edifice in Central Trinidad.

Point Lisas comes to mind. It became unionised and duly negotiated a collective agreement covering all employees. Once the building was satisfactorily done, the company went back to from whence it had come. Contract finished.

Twenty years later, said construction company returned to start another contract for a different organisation, and was astonished when the union it had once known showed up in its offices to claim bargaining rights.

Under our legislation, once a union has recognition. it does not lapse from inaction. Once recognition is granted. the only way it can be withdrawn is by being taken over by another union. It matters not that after 20 years all the employees a