An Auckland rugby league stalwart laid off from a player development trust during the code's financial troubles last year has lost a legal challenge to his redundancy.
Bob Hall, a former first-grade player with 50 years' involvement in the game, including as a coach and administrator, complained that he was induced
to accept the ending of an employment contract by advice that the Rugby League Development Trust was about to be wound up.
He lodged a personal grievance claim with the Employment Relations Authority eight months later, in January, after finding that the trust, for which he worked as national special projects manager under a one-year contract with a right of renewal, was still in existence.
As well as seeking compensation, he demanded a written apology for embarrassment experienced after his removal from office, exacerbated by what he said was the trust's continued employment of people doing his work.
But authority member Ralph Gardiner has found that the trust's survival did not render Mr Hall's redundancy invalid, and that it exceeded its obligations by paying him three months' salary while his contract demanded only one month's pay in lieu of notice.
Mr Gardiner accepted evidence from NZ Rugby League chairman Selwyn Pearson and others about the dysfunctional state of the trust for various reasons, such as the financial failure of the Auckland Warriors leading to their ownership change in late 2000.
"It is readily apparent from that evidence that the trust was entitled to restructure and shorten sail," he said.
Mr Gardiner also accepted that Mr Pearson indicated to Mr Hall that it was most likely the trust would be wound up, but said the reality was that his position was to be made redundant for financial reasons regardless of that prediction.
There was nothing abnormal in the fact that some of his duties were picked up by other employees.
Mr Pearson told the Herald yesterday that a trust deed was being "put back together" after the trustees quit following the Warriors' troubles.
It had been difficult laying people off. The trust now had just three staff compared with 14 before restructuring.
Trust general manager Peter Cordtz said the organisation began in 2000 as a joint venture between the Warriors, NZ Rugby League and Auckland Rugby League - which had since pulled out - for the "seamless" development of players of all ages.
It received A$250,000 ($294,000) a year from the Sydney-based National Rugby League because of the Warriors' membership of that organisation.
But although the NRL will not pay money directly to member clubs, he denied that the trust was a necessary vehicle for receiving development grants and therefore unable to be wound up, as alleged by Mr Hall.
Mr Cordtz said the NRL required only that both the Warriors and NZ Rugby League made joint decisions about how the grants were to be spent.
He said the game's provincial organisations now employed many of his former development staff.
An Auckland rugby league stalwart laid off from a player development trust during the code's financial troubles last year has lost a legal challenge to his redundancy.
Bob Hall, a former first-grade player with 50 years' involvement in the game, including as a coach and administrator, complained that he was induced
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