News - Legislation |
Unfair dismissal 1 October 2004
1 October 2004 and more implementation of the Employment Act 2002 introducing
important changes to unfair dismissal law and procedure.
Changes to unfair dismissal law in the Employment Act 2002
These changes will be coming into force on 1 October 2004.
Employers will have to follow statutory dispute resolution procedures.
If an employer does not follow the relevant procedure:
• the dismissal will be automatically unfair
• the employee will generally obtain a 10 - 50 per cent increase in compensation.
If the employer follows the statutory procedure but not a reasonable procedure outside it, such as its own disciplinary procedure or the ACAS Code of Practice that will not of itself render the dismissal unfair, if the employer shows that it would still have decided to dismiss the employee even if the correct procedure had been followed. In other words, the dismissal can still be fair if (and only if) the employer shows that following its own procedure would have made no difference to the outcome and, besides its breach of its procedure, the dismissal is fair.
