Rubel Bashir, an Employment Solicitor at Slater and Gordon Lawyers, provides answers to the most frequently asked questions concerning unfair dismissal, including:
What is an unfair dismissal claim?
Will I receive compensation through an unfair dismissal claim?
What can I do if I have been unfairly dismissed?
What are the time limits of an unfair dismissal claim?
How can a lawyer help if I have been unfairly dismissed from my job?
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Transcript:
Unfair dismissal is a claim you would pursue in an employment tribunal where you’ve been dismissed from employment. The usual remedies that the employee is seeking is compensation for the losses they’ve incurred. So usually you would have loss of earnings and that would form part of your compensation if you were successful. You would usually be awarded a basic award, which is calculated based on the number of years you’ve been employed with your employer, your age and your weakly wage. It’s currently capped at £489 per week - that’s a basic award. You would also then look to get a compensatory award, which is an amount the tribunal feels just inequitable. What the tribunals will look at is how long will it take you to get back into a similar position earning similar money.
You have a duty to mitigate your losses, which means that you have to try and look for alternative jobs and try and find ways of reducing down the losses that you have. There’s also other factors to take into consideration such as pensions and loss of statutory rights. Loss of statutory rights is an award you would get as you lose the protection where you get a new job you lose the protection of the two years’ service that you have or for redundancy pay etc so this is to compensate you for these losses.
The first thing that I would advise you to do is appeal the dismissal. Usually you would get five days from the date of your termination and it’s an internal process in terms of appealing your dismissal. One of the reasons it’s important to appeal your dismissal is that if you are successful in an unfair dismissal claim, failing to appeal can reduce down any potential compensation. You will need to pursue a claim within three months of your effective date of termination, which is usually the last date you were employed and it could be possible that an experienced employment lawyer can try to reach a resolution for you without having to go through an employment tribunal process, which will incur significant costs for you and also be a very stressful time for you.
To bring a claim for ordinary unfair dismissal you need to be employed for two continuous years. If you haven’t worked for two years and you’ve been dismissed, the first thing that I’d advise is you submit an appeal to the dismissal. Whilst the employer doesn’t have an obligation to deal with the appeal, most employers are reasonable and will do so. You would also potentially be entitled to a notice of termination and this would be determined by either your contract of employment or by statute unless you’ve been dismissed for an act of gross misconduct, in which case there would be no entitlement to a notice period.