Employment Relations Act 2000 - Termination of Employment

Termination of Employment

Employees can only be fired if the employer has a good reason and has followed a fair procedure.

Good reasons for firing employees include :

• Unsatisfactory performance
• Incompatibility with other employees
• Absenteeism
• Negligence
• Misrepresentation in a curriculum vitae (exaggeration in a CV may not be sufficient)
• Incompetence (where a person says they have a skill but in fact don't)
• Misconduct
• Inability to perform the work due to injury or illness
• Theft (of even low value items e.g. six jars of jam)
• Sleeping on the job
• Violence (even against a co-worker's car or a cow )

In all of these situations the seriousness of the "bad behaviour" is crucial. The termination must also be procedural fair. A procedure that does not follow the principles of natural justice is unlikely to be held to be fair. The leading case on procedural fairness is NZ Food Processing, IUOW v Unilever.

A dismissal following poor or unfair procedure will not necessary result in the Court finding that the dismissal was unjustified if the conduct was bad enough, but may result in the employee being awarded monetary compensation. Section 103A of the ERA states that the dismissal must be "fair and reasonable" under the circumstances. In 2006 a woman was sacked for forwarding an email containing pictures of naked people but the ERA awarded her $9000 for unjustified dismissal.

(See 7.1 Unjustifiable Dismissal below for further discussion)