How do I know if I've been unfairly dimissed?

From Lawpack's Employment Law Made Easy.

If you're dismissed without a fair reason, or without your employer following a fair procedure, this is likely to be unfair. Your dismissal will be for a potentially fair reason if it's:

• connected to your capability or qualifications for performing your job; this covers both performance-related dismissals and sickness absence dismissals; or
• connected to your conduct;
• redundancy;
• because you could not continue to work in the position which you held without breaking the law (e.g. a lorry driver losing a driving licence); or
• connected with some other substantial reason of a kind sufficient to justify your dismissal.

If the reason or principal reason for dismissal is one of the above, the next step is to consider whether under the circumstances dismissal was actually fair or unfair. This depends on all the circumstances surrounding the dismissal including the size and administrative resources of your employer. One of the decisive factors at this stage is whether or not your employer followed a fair procedure.

There are some circumstances when dismissal is deemed to be automatically unfair. This is the case if dismissal is for one of the following reasons:

• your membership or non-membership of an independent trade union or because you have taken part in activities of an independent trade union;
• a maternity-related reason;
• an adoption-related reason;
• a paternity-related reason;
• a health and safety reason;
• because you asserted your statutory rights;
• because you performed duties as an employee representative (or were a candidate to be an employee representative);
• because you performed duties as a pension scheme trustee;
• because of the transfer of an undertaking, i.e. where the ownership of the employer is transferred from one person/entity to another;
• a spent conviction or failure to disclose a spent conviction;
• selection for redundancy for any of the above reasons;
• taking parental leave or taking time off for dependants;
• making a protected disclosure (i.e. whistleblowing);
• a National Minimum Wage reason;
• enforcing a right to Working Family Tax Credit; or
• taking part in protected industrial action.

In addition, since October 2004 failure by an employer to comply with statutory dispute resolution procedures will render a dismissal automatically unfair (see ' What should I do if I have a grievance about my employer's actions?' for further information).

Law stated as at 1 April, 2005

04 July 2008