The Patent Unfairness of the Dismissal Compensation Awards

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Corporate interests are again prevailing when it comes to allowed compensation for unfair dismissal charges. With a new law instituting a 52 week’s pay cap for restitution due an employee now governing allowable unfair dismissal compensation, the government is clearly coming down firmly on the side of the employer.

It is unfortunate that many, if not indeed most, employees will not find any surprise in this diminution of their potential awards should they become victim of an unfair dismissal. With $74,200 being the going rate for those firms that wish to unfairly dismiss an employee for whatever underhanded reason they choose.

For if there is a case of unfair dismissal, the description underhanded can equally be used to describe such a personnel move. This is clearly a black eye for the great cause of labor. Because the 52 week limitation does not recognize any benefits such as health cover and any other employment related perks that the worker has earned.

Also lost in the government’s cut and dried approach to averaging unfair dismissal compensation is any increased payment for an employee’s regular overtime work. All of this ratcheting down of unfair dismissal compensation begins to take the pall of mollycoddling corporate malfeasance.

Perhaps those who enacted the unfair dismissal compensation statutes felt that they were performing a public service. A service that limits court penalties to business interests must, they must have believed, cater to a more stable economy. That will be accomplished by allowing businesses, however corrupt, to maintain an increased liquidity from eschewing damaging hits to their bottom line from such disrupting fines.

With the unfair dismissal compensation award being derived from an average of the very last 12 weeks of service, employers are able to time their unfair dismissal for the period of minimum employee recompense. Such as retail employees being unfairly dismissed prior to the beginning of Christmas season or another employee being unjustly let go before whatever busy season is normal for a given line of work.

A modest loophole, like the throwing to the proverbial dog its bone, yet remains for employees. They can seek to play the discrimination card.

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