it often happens that there's an unfair dismissal case brought
against an employer in circumstances where the employer is making the position redundant
and makes an offer of alternative employment to the employee and the employee refuses the
alternative is for whatever reason not prepared to take the alternative
job that's offered the employee then will essentially be terminated and will probably bring
a claim for either unfair dismissal or a claim that they are entitled to redundancy that they
have not disentitled themselves from a redundancy payment by reason of their failure to take up the
alternative employment and they'll be saying that their decision to refuse the alternative
was reasonable in all the circumstances there's a number of cases as you might imagine
dealing with this very topic but was one recently in november of 2021 involving a crash manager
who refused alternative employment that was offered to her she brought a claim
then for a redundancy payment against the employer the employer's position was that
she wasn't entitled to redundancy because a reasonable alternative had been offered
and therefore she was disentitled from it the workplace relations commission dealt with the case
and found amongst other things that the proposed move to the position of montessori teacher
entailing the loss of her manager's position and answering to an additional
two persons in positions of authority above the complainant reveals a level of responsibility
below that of our previous role i find that it does constitute a demotion therefore it
was reasonable for the employee to refuse this offer so this employee was the manager of a crash
she had been offered a position as a montessori teacher it involved the loss of her manager's
position and answering to two additional persons in positions of authority above her she refused
the workplace relations commission adjudicator found that that was a reasonable refusal
the employer also made another offer of a role where there was no demotion but it was a verbal
offer and would have led to additional traveling and child care costs on account of its location
that raises the interesting question is the employee entitled to refuse an alternative
by reason of issues or factors personal to them outside of the workplace for example child care
obligations or traveling across the city or traveling to a different location or whatever
in this case the adjudication officer found that there would be an additional commute of 40 minutes
per day if using a car and a longer commute if traveling by bus the distance between nut grove
and bowman is seven kilometers in excess of the distance between nut grove and barrow street the
labor court concluded that the same journey and associated travel meant at a job offer was not one
that constituted suitable alternative employment the labor court in a previous case involving mr
garrett brown in the case called mr garrett brown said that in assessing the suitability this is
vitally important in assessing the suitability of an offer under reasonableness or otherwise
of refusal to accept an offer they're guided by a decision an english eat decision the suitability
of employment is an objective matter whereas the reasonableness of the employee's refusal
depends on factors personal to him or horror and is a subjective matter to be considered from the
employee's point of view i'll say that again because it's very very important and it's the
takeaway that you need to take from this video the suitability of employment is an objective matter
the employer can put forward anything whereas the reasonableness of the employee's refusal to
take that job will depend on factors personal to him or horror and is a subjective matter
to be considered from the employees perspective so in this case the adjudication officer held that
the refusal of an offer of a manager's position in the bengal facility due to the factors personal
to horror was a reasonable refusal and decided the employee was entitled to a redundancy payment this
is an important case from the point of view of these types of cases where there is a redundancy
but the employer is saying you're not entitled to redundancy you're disentitled because i'm making
you a reasonable alternative and the fact then or the circumstances may arise where the employee
refuses the offer and the question arises then where they're reasonable in refusing the offer
so we see here in this case that the suitability is an object of matter
whereas the reasonableness of the employee's refusal depends on factors personal to him or her
and is a subjective matter to be considered from the employee's point of view hope you find this
video useful if you do i'd appreciate if you gave it the thumbs up down below thanks a lot