When an employee has been unfairly dismissed, the employer must take remedial measures such as “the basic award” for such dismissal. Unfair dismissal violates the constitutional rights of the employee who is entitled to fair compensation for the unfair loss of his/her job. The basic award is calculated according to the employee’s tenure of service, his/her age and the normal or usual salary paid to the employee. This will help in arriving at a fair figure as compensation for unfair dismissal. However, the basic pay award is according to a limited amount and does not include other benefits such as travel allowances etc.
Besides the basic pay award, the maximum time of employment that will be considered for compensation is up to 20 years of continuous service with the organization. However, this compensation can be reduced in the circumstances that: The employee shares the responsibility for his/her termination, If the employee refuses a reasonable offer to come back on the job, The conduct of the employee which led to the dismissal, Any extra payments that are connected with the basic pay compensation, Redundancy payments already received by employee if the termination is due to redundancy. An employee can claim and receive compensation for both wrongful and unfair dismissal. However, the amount received for either one will cancel any amount or claims for the other. This is done to protect the interests of the employer and prevents the employee receiving double compensation.
To receive compensation for wrongful dismissal, an employee is entitled to fair compensation under Section 94 of the Employment Rights Act of 1996 which categorically states that the employer cannot unfairly dismiss any employee provided of course that the employee meets certain criterion that qualified him/her for compensation and would entitle him/her to be adequately compensated for unfair dismissal according to the labour law. The law is implemented to protect employees from unfair dismissal and therefore the employer must pay a price for the unfair termination of employment.
However, the employee must also have certain qualifications to receive compensation from the employer, which includes: The employee has to be an “eligible employee”. What this means according to rules that the employee must have worked for at least two years continues to be able to bring the claim for wrongful dismissal. However, the issue of eligibility is quite debatable as to what constitutes eligibility because there could be several exclusions in the one year period, and it may be possible for an employee to lodge a claim in certain cases where the one year period has not been completed.
