Judicial review assesses legality, procedural correctness, and rationality, not simply the merits, ensuring decisions of the Industrial Court are upheld unless serious injustice is evident.

JUDGMENT

Evrol Mariette Peters JC:

Introduction

[1] This was an application ("this Application") for judicial review filed by the Applicant, pursuant to O 53 r 2 of the Rules of 2012 ("Rules of ") for an Order for Certiorari to quash the Award of the Second Respondent ("the Industrial Court") dated 27 August 2019.

The background facts

[2] The issue before the Industrial Court revolved around a dispute between the Applicant and the First Respondent ("the Union") over the Terms and Conditions of Employment to be incorporated into the 14th Collective Agreement for the employees of the Applicant, who are under the scope of representation of the Union. It was impressed upon this Court that the 14th Collective Agreement which was disputed, had already expired since the Industrial Court had decided that the duration of the 14th Collective Agreement was from 1 October 2017 to 30 September 2020.

[3] The Union and the Applicant had previously entered into 13 successive Collective Agreements, and since negotiations for the 14th Collective Agreement ("the Collective Agreement") had reached a deadlock, the Union wrote to the Director General of Industrial Relations to intervene, in accordance with his powers under the Industrial Relations Act 1967 ("Industrial Relations Act"). The conciliation meetings at the Industrial Relations Department were unsuccessful, and hence the reference by the Minister for Human Resources ("the Minister") to the Industrial Court, under s 26(2) of the Industrial Relations Act, which reads:

Section 26 - Reference of trade disputes to the Court

(2) The Minister may of his own motion or upon receiving the notification of the Director General under subsection 18(5) refer any trade dispute to the Court if he is satisfied that it is expedient so to do:

Provided that in the case of a trade dispute in any Government service or in the service of any statutory authority, reference shall not be made except with the consent of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong or State Authority as the case may require.

[4] The Minister had referred the whole Collective Agreement, containing 45 articles, which included an Appendix A, to be adjudicated before the Industrial Court. The learned Industrial Court Judge ("ICJ") maintained the status quo of 32 articles, leaving disputed, the remaining 13 articles and Appendix A.

[5] The learned ICJ handed down the following Award with regard to the disputed articles:

[6] Dissatisfied, the Applicant filed this Application, challenging part of the Award, in particular art 37, that is, the learned ICJ's decision to adopt the Union's proposal for the increase in the minimum and maximum salary band for the employees. This Application was dismissed for the following reasons.

The Applicable Law

[7] In the landmark House of Lords case of Council of Civil Service Unions ("CCSU") v. Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374, the grounds of illegality, irrationality, and procedural impropriety, which formed the basis of judicial review, were expounded by Lord Diplock in the following passages:

By "illegality" as a ground for judicial review I mean that the decision-maker must understand correctly the law that regulates his decision-making power and must give effect to it. Whether he has or not is par excellence a justiciable question to be decided, in the event of dispute, by those persons, the judges, by whom the judicial power of the state is exercisable.

By "irrationality" I mean what can by now be succinctly referred to as "Wednesbury unreasonableness" (Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v. Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223). It applies to a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it. Whether a decision falls within this category is a question that judges by their training and experience should be well equipped to answer, or else there would be something badly wr