Employment Disputes and Terminations: Common Questions

The law lists specific grounds, including dishonesty in duty, intentionally causing loss to the employer, serious breach of work rules, and abandonment for the prescribed number of consecutive days. Each needs documentary support and must be stated in the termination letter; a ground left unstated is hard to raise afterwards.

There is no single number that fits every case; what counts is the seriousness of the conduct and how clear the warning was. A usable warning identifies the behaviour, the date and time, the rule breached, and the consequence of repetition, with proof that the employee received it.

A change in employment conditions that disadvantages the employee needs consent. A transfer that cuts pay or moves the workplace a long way without agreement can be treated as constructive dismissal, with severance payable anyway, so record any change as a written agreement.

Probation does not remove the notice obligation, and once the statutory service threshold is passed the severance entitlement begins to accrue. Believing probation allows free dismissal is one of the most frequent sources of claims we see.

The Labour Protection Act sets bands by service, which open after a worker completes the first 120-day threshold and then rise in steps with the years worked up to a maximum for long service. The base is the last wage rate, which includes regular fixed payments, not the basic salary alone.

Payment in lieu covers the advance notice that should have run to the next wage payment date; severance is a separate entitlement based on service. Both can fall due in the same termination, and they are frequently miscalculated because they get merged into one lump.

Severance is taxable income, but payments made on leaving employment have their own computation method that can differ from simply adding the amount to regular salary, depending on service length and the type of payment. Choosing the wrong method over-withholds and creates a second dispute about the refund.

On termination the employer pays wages for annual leave not yet taken, pro-rated for the year worked, plus any days carried over under an agreed policy. Leave records that reconcile to payroll matter here, because the number of days is contested in almost every case.

The employment contract, the work rules, historical payslips, time records, written warnings and proof of transfer. When those six agree, cases end quickly; when payslips and transfers disagree even for a few months, the dispute widens to overtime across the whole period of service.

Once headcount reaches the statutory threshold, written work rules must exist and be communicated to staff. In litigation they are the yardstick for what counts as a serious breach, so their absence — or the absence of any proof they were announced — immediately weakens a no-severance argument.

You cannot prove payment when a dispute starts, and on many issues the burden of proof sits with the employer. Without fully signed receipts the safer route is to transfer every employee's pay to a bank account and keep the transfer report alongside each payslip run.

Substance decides, not the contract's title. Fixed hours, supervision and use of the principal's equipment usually indicate employment, which brings social security duties and severance with it. Calling someone a contractor while they work as staff is exposure on both the labour and the tax side.

The employer files the leaver notification with the Social Security Office by the cut-off falling in the month following departure, stating the true reason for leaving, because that reason directly determines the employee's unemployment benefit entitlement.

Reply to the letter and produce the requested records on time, organised around the specific complaint. Not attending or filing incomplete records means the order is made on one side's information only, and challenging it afterwards must happen inside a tight window.

If the amount in dispute is close to what the statutory calculation gives anyway, mediation usually wins on speed and cost control. Where the issue is the ground for dismissal and will set a precedent with the rest of the staff, a judgment may be worth the extra time.

Beyond the labour-law payments, the work permit must be dealt with and the relevant authorities notified within their deadlines, which also affects the employee's permission to stay. Aligning the last working day with the permit cancellation date avoids trouble for both sides.

Yes, and we recommend doing it first. The combined figure for severance, notice, unused leave and withholding is usually different from the mental estimate. With the real number in hand, the choice between negotiating and proceeding fully becomes an informed one.

The employment contract, six to twelve months of payslips, the leave balance record, any written warnings, the work rules, and a short timeline of events. The first five are documents; the timeline is what lets us find the issue quickly without interviewing everyone in turn.

This team handles the calculations, the document bundle, withholding and remittance, and drafting the written position. Court advocacy passes to the affiliated legal team that runs cases, so the numbers are already settled before counsel receives the file.

Three things: a warning template that captures every required element, a time-recording system that reconciles to payslips, and an approval step that runs the payout calculation before anyone is told. Those three cover the origin of most cases we have handled.