Disciplinary dismissal, allowances and procedural errors
Step 1 / 4·Dismissal is discipline, not contract termination
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Learning objectives — after this module you will:
- Know the labour disciplinary sequence
- Tell severance allowance apart from job-loss allowance
- Recognise the procedural errors that lose cases
Dismissal is discipline, not contract termination
Separate two routes with entirely different procedures.
Dismissal is the most severe form of LABOUR DISCIPLINE, not a variety of unilateral termination. The two routes rest on different grounds, follow different procedures, and produce different consequences. Confusing them is a serious error and very hard to repair once the decision has been issued.
A precondition for any disciplinary action: the conduct being sanctioned must be set out in the company's INTERNAL LABOUR REGULATIONS, and those regulations must have been issued and registered as required. Without valid regulations there is no basis for discipline, however obvious the breach.
The labour disciplinary sequence
- Establish whether the conduct is covered by valid internal labour regulations.
- Collect and preserve evidence of the breach.
- Give notice and convene a disciplinary hearing, with the employee representative body and the employee present.
- Hold the hearing and produce minutes signed by everyone attending.
- Issue the disciplinary decision within the statutory limitation period.
- Deliver the decision to the employee and keep a complete file.
Three procedural errors that sink the whole case
One, failing to invite — or to prove you invited — the employee and the representative body to the hearing. Two, no minutes, or minutes without signatures. Three, issuing the decision outside the limitation period. Any of these voids the decision even when the breach was real and serious.
Key takeaway: Dismissal needs valid internal regulations and a correct hearing; no regulations means no basis for discipline.