Afrigather A Kenyan court docket has put aside a February 2024 interim order that pressured B2B e-commerce startup Wasoko to maintain 9 staff on its payroll regardless of laying them off in December 2023. The court docket stated the workers have been “undeserving” of the order after they withheld essential data.
Regardless of reinstating the workers, they failed to indicate up for work, Wasoko’s legal professionals argued. One of many claimants was nonetheless employed by Wasoko on the time of the order and took part in redundancy negotiations. The court docket agreed with Wasoko’s argument that protecting them on payroll would quantity to “unjust enrichment.”
“Earlier than me are claimants who’ve since acquiring the orders declined to current themselves to work and within the case of 1, taken steps to accede to the difficulty that introduced them to court docket,” the court docket held in its June 11, 2024 determination.
The workers disagreed with the ruling, and one individual with direct information of the matter claimed Wasoko allowed them to earn a living from home often. The identical individual added that they’d restricted entry to work instruments, and claimed a hostile work atmosphere after they sued made working from the workplace untenable.
Because of the ruling, the events to the lawsuit will now put together for a pre-trial listening to on the wrongful termination swimsuit introduced by the 9 ex-employees.
Wasoko maintains it adopted due course of within the layoffs, and that the preliminary redundancy notices from December 2023 have been legitimate. It additionally issued a brand new discover after the February interim order.
In April 2024, the ex-employees obtained and stored their redundancy funds. Nevertheless, the ex-employees claimed that Wasoko erroneously launched the funds whereas the case was ongoing.
Whereas the case continues, Wasoko’s celebrated merger with Egypt’s MaxAB, anticipated to be concluded by April 2024 stays uncompleted, with TechCrunch citing “prolonged due diligence” as the reason for delay.
