Termination & Resignation

Termination of Employment

Most awards state that the party wishing to terminate the employment should give the other party appropriate advance notice, usually one week. Where either party does not give the prescribed notice, appropriate wages should be paid or forfeited in lieu of notice.

Generally, if the employee leaves without giving proper notice, the employer may retain wages equivalent to the notice required and in some cases proportionate annual leave may be retained also. Some awards provide for a qualifying period during which no notice is required. Other awards need more or less than one weeks notice.

To avoid any misunderstanding, notice should be in writing or perhaps in front of a witness, even though this may not be a requirement of the relevant award.

The requirement for the employer to give notice may be waived if there is a breach of contract in the form of serious and wilful misconduct by the employee.

Except in special cases, an employer cannot legitimately stand-down an employee without pay.

Employers should be aware of unfair dismissal legislation that applies to their employees.

Redundancy

Most state awards do not contain any provisions in respect to redundancy, however, the Industrial Relations Act 1984 makes the following requirement:

Section 47AH

(1) Unless prescribed otherwise in an Act, award or agreement or determined otherwise by the Commission, an employee with more than one year’s employment with an employer must be given not less than 4 weeks’ notice of the employer’s intention to terminate the employee’s employment on account of redundancy or 4 weeks’ pay in lieu of such notice.

(2) Unless prescribed otherwise in an Act, award or agreement or determined otherwise by the Commission, if an employee’s employment is terminated on account of redundancy, the employee is entitled to a redundancy severance payment calculated on the basis of 2 weeks’ wages for each completed year of employment with the employer, up to a maximum of 12 weeks.