in this video you will learn what the options are for you if you are on
probation and you're concerned about being dismissed or you have been
dismissed and you were on probation basically the situation is quite frankly
pretty grim when you're on probation you have very very limited means and very
very limited release open to you and the probation period is essentially a period
during which the employer gets to see whether you're right for the
organization or not and ultimately during probation an employer can dismiss
an employee for good bad or no reason now there are some options open to the
employee but as I said they are not great and in this video I'm going to
explain to you what those options are and why they're so limited first thing
we need to have a look at is the unfair dismissals Act of 1977 so we take a look
at that here the first thing we wanted to have a look at in the unfair
distances like 1977 and this gives the basis for all unfair dismissal claims
first thing you need to look at is section 2 which sets out the exclusions
you'll see up here at a an employee who is dismissed who at the date of his
dismissal had less than 1 years continuous service with the employer who
dismissed him basically is excluded from the operation of the Act you see here
this act shall not apply in relation to any of the following persons there's a
number of them there but the biggest one that would concern most people would be
employees who are on or have less than 12 months continuous service so less
than 1 years continuous service with the employer the Act does not apply to you
so that's one major problem if you're on probation or have been on probation that
section two of the unfair defenses like 1977 section 3 then deals with dismissal
during probation or training and again we see here in section 3 this act shall
not apply in relation to the dismissal of an employee during a period blah de
blah de blah when he's on probation or undergoing training etc so essentially
if you're on probation the Act does not apply so less than five months service
or on probation and the unfair the census act is unlikely to be of benefit
to you now there are circumstances where it will be of benefit to you these are
exceptional situations and they are set house in section is section 6 on
fearlessness you see here it goes on to say that without prejudice bright
prejudice to the generality of subsection 1 of this section the
dismissal of an employee shall be deemed for the purposes of this act to be an
unfair dismissal if it results wholly or mainly from one or more of the following
he is the employees membership of post membership of a trade union be their
religious or political opinions of the employee and the most important - then
after that will be the race or color of the employee or the pregnancy of the
employee or matters concerned with the pregnancy so section 6 will allow you to
bring a claim for unfair business even if you haven't got the 12-month service
provided the dismissal was on the grounds of your pregnancy or trade union
membership or religious or political opinions or race or color that's an
important enough exception but generally it can be very very difficult for an
employee to prove that their dismissal was
because of any of these things but they are important sections or important
exceptions rather and daughter acquired a 12-month service okay so if the unfair
dismissals act 1977 isn't the most benefit to you what he left with well we
can bring a claim under the industrial relations like nineteen sixty nine and
this allows you to bring a claim to waters Rights Commissioner service is
now Workplace Relations Commission however we have a look down here you
will see that if a party objects in other word if the employer objects to
the Rights Commissioner or workplace relations commission investigating the
dispute then it cannot investigators so essentially if you're an employee in the
bring a claim you refer a complaint to the workplace registration under this
section 13 of Industrial Relations Act 1969 if the employer writes back and
says I object to this going ahead then it cannot be heard but that closed-off
however you can then refer a claim under Section 20 so section 1 or 2 of the Act
and what you're basically referring here is for investigation to the labor code
is a trade dispute so regardless of your situation you might it's not a trade
dispute as you might come across in say the newspapers on TV but you can
consider your dismissal to be a trade dispute within the terms of the industry
relations I've 1969 and so you can refer a case to the labor court under Section
20 the problem with it is unlike the previous section section 13 is that if
the decision from the labor code goes in your favor
it's simply a recommendation it is not legally enforceable now if those have
some moral authority and it does have some persuasive Authority but if the
employer simply chooses to ignore well that's it now it depends on the employer
an employer could be one who is very concerned about for example their brand
and their public relations and so on and if you went along and for example had a
picket outside the premises or held up some sort of scientist gene that you had
got his favorable recommendation from the labor court under Section 20 and
that the employer or former employer was simply ignoring it but clearly they
might decide to perhaps buy you off or pay you off for sadness or get rid of
you to save themselves the embarrassment but from a legal perspective this is
legally unenforceable so that's the difficulty when you're on probation the
unfair dismissals Act 1977 does not apply when you're on probation the
Industrial Relations Act 1969 does not have only 12 months service requirement
however in the first instance section 13 a section 13 referral means that the
employer can simply say I don't agree with this and a section 21 goes to the
labor court but the outcome if it's favorable to you is legally
unenforceable now there's another couple of areas that you might have a look at
if you have been dismissed on probation and they will be claims under equality
legislation so I quietly claim not to default HIV only because that's gone now
both to work reservations Commission an equality based claim or perhaps the
claim under the protected disclosure act of 2014 which doesn't have a service or
continuous employment requirement or you can simply go to court and sue for
breach of contract or on from this issue but if you go to court
and sue for breach of contract or wrongful dismissal generally all you're
entitled to is not compensation but to have to be compensated for the fact that
the contract wasn't complied with so say you're entitled to one or two weeks
notice and that wasn't given to you well then you're entitled to sue then for
breach of contract because you're saying once notice must not given to you but
the most you can win then is the the month's salary or the monster notice
that you were title to so that you know it's gonna leave you with a decision to
make in terms of whether it's cost-effective and whether it's worth
your while suing or going to court for a relatively small amount of money so
generally if you're on probation I would say and I advise people who contact me
all the time that they're in a pretty weak position and the best advice that I
could give them is to try to get through the probation period to try to ensure
that they get 12 months continuous service under their belt and then
whatever difficulties that they may have in the workplace certainly they could
ventilate him then but it's safer to do after 12 months service and when you're
off probation rather than when you're on probation or you're less than 2/3 month
service accumulated I hope you find this video useful if you do you might just
give it a thumbs up while you're watching it on YouTube or Facebook or
wherever and if any questions or comments maybe put them underneath the
video and subscribe to my youtube channel if you find this useful thanks
for watching