protection against unfair dismissal

The common law offers the employee virtually no protection against unfair dismissal.

Scrapping protection against unfair dismissal, even for people who have given years of loyal service, will do absolutely nothing to boost the economy.

Labour proposed a new Charter of Rights, placing all workers on an equal legal footing, the right to protection against unfair dismissal, and access to health and safety protection.

These are concerned with two specific types of temporary worker, persons on fixed-term contracts of less than 12 months (the then qualifying period for protection against unfair dismissal) and agency-supplied workers.

If the approach of the NIRC in Winsper is followed, the detailed provisions of rule books will seriously limit the operation of sections dealing with protection against unfair dismissal.

The Labour Court held that the term "employee" in the LRA encompasses a person who has concluded a contract to work, and that such person would enjoy protection against unfair dismissal.

-Bear in mind that in order to claim maternity benefits or redundancy pay and to have protection against unfair dismissal, you need to have worked for at least two years and 16 hours each week.

As Kahn-Freund (1974) has shown, although transplantation of labour relations rules relating to individual workers - such as legislative protection against unfair dismissal - is relatively straightforward, this is not the case with provisions of a collective nature.

As we have seen in Chapter I, most employment law rights are available only to people having a minimum of four weeks' service, whilst protection against unfair dismissal for other than trade union activities, even with the law at its most liberal, required six months' service.

The industrial tribunals at present have no jurisdiction to decide breaches of contracts of employment, and if the statutory protection against unfair dismissal is to retain its advantages over common law it is essential that tribunals decide cases according to reasonableness and not contract.