Unfair Dismissal
You need to be employed for at least one year in order to bring a claim for unfair dismissal. When you are unfairly dismissed you only have 3 months to bring a claim in the tribunal. This does not get extended by any grievance process. If you win a claim then your compensation will reflect how much money you lost by being out of a job. For example, if you were only out of a job for 2 weeks, you will get very little compensation. The maximum award will be 80,000 as at 01 February 2010.
One year’s service needed
If you get fired before your one year is up, you wont be able to bring an unfair dismissal claim. Discrimination is still valid however. What if you get fired after say 11 months, and they dont give you your one month’s notice? Well, unfortunately all you can do is bring a claim for your one months’ notice. It is however often possible to obtain some kind of settlement in these situations with some tough negotiating, regardless of the legalities of it all!
If you are dismissed after 51 weeks service without notice, in circumstances which should not warrant summary termination for gross misconduct, the Tribunal can add the one week statutory notice, giving the minimum one year’s service for an unfair dismissal claim. The last day of employment would then be the date when proper statutory notice would have ended.
Exceptions
Although generally at least one year’s continuous employment is needed to be able to bring an unfair dismissal claim, if the dismissal is for one of the ‘automatically unfair’ reasons below there is no qualifying period:
- Health and Safety dismissal
- Pregnancy related dismissal (only if the employer was aware the employee was pregnant)
- Dismissal related to asserting a statutory right
- Dismissal relating to Trade union membership or non-membership
- Dismissal in connection with the national minimum wage
- Dismissal connected with refusing to exceed the 48-hour working week
- Dismissal for whistleblowing
Just because you don’t have one year’s service you are not automatically barred from bringing one of the above claims.
If the dismissal is related to discrimination on grounds of sex, race, age, disability, sexual orientation or religious belief, there is similarly no 1-year limit and no limit on the amount of damages the Tribunal can award for unfair dismissal.
What is the definition of unfair dismissal?
Firstly, you need to look at the reason given for the dismissal. There are 4 main acceptable reasons:-
- Capability
- Conduct
- Redundancy
- Retirement
If the reason given to you was not one of these reasons, the chances are that you were unfairly dismissed. For example, if you were told that you were being dismissed because you are too good looking, or too thin, this is definitely not a fair reason.
If you have been given a potentially fair reason, the next thing to look at is the procedure. If a fair procedure was not followed, then you can still claim for unfair dismissal. Any compensation could be reduced to reflect the chances that you would have been dismissed if the correct procedure has been followed (a polkey reduction).
Exactly what is a fair procedure varies depending on the size of your employer. The bigger the company, the more hoops they will have to jump through. As a guideline, an employee should be given warnings and chances to improve. They should have a fair hearing, with the chance to bring a colleague. And they should have a right of appeal to a higher level of management (or a different manager if it is a small employer). The Acas guidelines are used by the Employment Tribunals to measure whether a procedure was fair.
Proving that the reason given was not the real reason for your dismissal
If you were given a fair reason, and the procedure was fair, then you can still claim for unfair dismissal. You just need to prove that in fact there was a different reason why you were dismissed and that the employer was just clever by following all the correct procedures. This is very common situation. For example, one of the management becomes jealous over an employee s success.
You might want to get a rough idea of the value of your case by filling in the Compromise Calculator. Also think about getting some representation have a look at the Employee Experiences to see how others in your situation were helped on their journey.
If you want to fight your unfair dismissal or if you have any other compromise agreement query, including how to get representation at no up front cost, email us on info@compromiseagree.com, call us 0800 533 5134 or send a message in the box to the bottom right.
