Dismissal decision justified

The Employment Relations Authority has rejected a claim for unjustified dismissal.  The employee was dismissed after an investigation into two incidents of the employee failing to comply with legal requirements and breaching the employer’s rules over reporting incidents to the General Manager.

In relation to both incidents the ERA found that the matters alleged had occurred and that they amounted to serious misconduct and justified the employee’s dismissal.  The ERA was not satisfied as to the employee’s honesty in giving his responses to the employer during the investigation and also during the ERA hearing.  CCTV footage showed that the employee was not where he alleged he was during one of the incidents.

The employer had failed to provide the CCTV footage to the employee during the investigation but the ERA held that that failure did not make the process unfair as the footage clearly showed the employee to not be where he claimed he was at the time of the incident.

In this case the employer had clearly put the allegations to the employee and advised him of how serious the allegations were and given him a very fair opportunity to comment on the allegations.  It had then considered the employee’s responses and carried out a fair investigation before deciding that serious misconduct had occurred and that the employee should be dismissed for those multiple instances of serious misconduct.

Alan Knowsley
Employment Lawyer
Wellington