you may have heard and if you've listened to me at any time or if you've
read any of my blog posts on my website employment rates on comm you will have
noticed that nearly % of unfair dismissal things which are lost by
employers are lost for one reason and that one reason is lack of fair
procedures and natural justice in the way that they carry out the termination
of employment I recently wrote a blog post about such a case and it is a
typical example of how an employer even where they feel very strongly that they
are in the right and that they are entirely justified in terminating the
employment get caught out and are basically at the tenant of the decision
against them for unfair dismissal now they may have been perfectly justified
in doing what they did in other words in arriving at the decision that they
arrived at however the procedure is the procedure is the procedure and you do
need to give fair procedures let me explain this case the decision was
published in December of 2018 the hearing was held at Inc in July of 2018
involved a part-time bus driver the allegation against the part-time bus
driver was that he had stolen 20 used wheel rims I think both wheel rims in
the workplace his position was that he had the permission from his supervisor
or manager or somebody up the food chain and what happened was a services manager
I think kind of an investigation and then arrived at a decision after
disciplinary hearing that the employment was over your job is
terminators and this is essentially misconduct or gross misconduct or
whatever and you're over the job they offered him the opportunity to appeal
and he did appeal the decision however the appeal was never heard
excuse me by the time he came on to the WRC
hearing the appeal had never been heard so that was one problem with relation or
in relation to fair procedures and natural justice but the other problem
was one which can be easy enough to fall into quite frankly it is where the
investigator essentially makes the decision so generally there may be two
stages in the disciplinary procedures is the investigative stage to see whether a
person has a case to answer and it's a fact-finding stage and that there's a
disciplinary stage in other words if having carried out an investigation the
company or employer decides that a disciplinary procedure is justified that
warranted telling moves on to the Disciplinary stage however it is not a
good idea from a fair procedure and natural justice perspective to allow the
same people or persons be involved in the investigation and be involved in the
disciplinary procedure when this employee receives his termination letter
it said following an investigation and the Disciplinary procedure or whatever
your employment has been terminated however the Disciplinary meeting was
carried out by the services manager the services manager had also investigated
the allegation and the letter came from the employer then to the employee saying
following investigation and the disciplinary sanction is essentially
termination or something of that nature but that is clear evidence that was
investigation carried out so a of an investigation being in a disciplinary
situation so you have a two-stage procedure and you have the same person
the services manager involved in both stages that essentially is
unacceptable from the perspectives or view of the Labour Court on the WRC and
from the perspective of natural justice and fair procedures so the most driver
who own his claim for unfair dismissal but not only to the winner
he won reinstatement and he won restoration of his salary back dated to
the day of termination so I'm not a hundred percent whether it's from the
date of termination to the date of the hearing or from the date of termination
to the date of going back to the job having won this decision in December of
2018 because obviously it was a six-month gap between the hearing in
July of 18 and December 18 when the decision was handed down but in any
event it is an expensive lessons for the employer because the employee has been
restored reinstated to his position and his salary from the date that he was
terminators to would reinstate us I hope you find this video useful if you do
give the thumbs up down below and you may be interested in subscribing to my
youtube channel if you do remember we will be connected until one of us passes
away to reiterate though in relation to fair procedures and natural justice it
is critical if you're an employer to afford fair procedures and natural
justice to an employee because even if you feel entirely justified in arriving
at the decision that you've arrived at if you don't do the fair procedures
thing then you're gonna lose your case the employee will win and the other
important point to remember is the WRC adjudicator in this case again confirmed
that it is not for the WRC to decide upon the rights or wrongs of the actual
allegation against the employee in other words the WRC adjudicator or indeed the
Labour court are not concerned about the allegation being proved about the
guilt or innocence of the employee what WRC were concerned about in this case
was did the employee lose his job after fair procedures and after having been
given natural justice and after having been given the chance fair chance to
address the allegations to deal with them question witnesses if necessary to
test the evidence and ultimately to appeal and essentially in this case as I
say he fell down on the grounds of fair procedure the employee won his case and
if you find this video useful please give us a thumbs up down below as I say
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