Why your employee is likely to challenge termination of his employment?

It is an established fact throughout a study of the Labour Dispute status in Tanzania for the past 10 years that more than 95% of referred disputes at CMA or the Labour office were referred by the employees. It is very rare to see an employer file a labour dispute complaining about employees but vice versa is very true.

Another important fact is that more than 85% of the referred disputes by employees are challenging the termination of their employment.  And finally, more than 80% of employees’ claims succeed in challenging termination and hence awarded compensation not less than 12 months’ salary among other terminal benefits like notice, severance pay, leave accrued etc.

Therefore, according to these facts, it is very likely your current employee or employees are going to challenge termination in case you are going to terminate them for any reason.

Based on the above-mentioned facts, then the real question to understand these facts is

 What could be the real reasons for employees to challenge termination whenever it occurred?

Why employees are likely to challenge the termination of employment whenever terminated?

There are about 7 common factors that make the employee challenge termination. Today we are going to discuss factor number one.

Economic reason

It is a fact that an employee is dedicating his entire time to work for your organization. He works approximately 45 hrs per week and 26 days per month. In this circumstance is highly unlikely that he/she owns another business or source of income besides his employment. Employees manage their personal affairs based on the salary or income he gets from employment. Assume that he has worked with you for more than 5 years, thus it makes his whole life dependent on his employment.

Economic reason or dependence on his employment is the most common reason forcing the employee to challenge his termination. An employee whose employment has been terminated will fight to get more benefits attached to the employment despite the reason afforded by the employer for such termination.

You may have a genuine reason and legal reasons for terminating the employee, such as misconduct an employee or poor performance or retrenchment. But, despite the reason still, he will fight because it is his job which used to run his entire life, therefore he is not willing to let it go without a fight.

We have come across some employers whose employees have filed/referred labour disputes against them, and they (employers) are explaining how they use to treat such employees and helping them (employees) in different circumstances which are beyond their contractual obligation but still when an employee is terminated he forgets all good things done by the employer. You can be one of them in the near future. Simply put employers needs to understand that employee will not let go of a job easily upon termination he will fight to the end.

If it is the case that you will likely be challenged by your employee in termination, then are you prepared for that fight in a labour dispute? If you are not then –

Important Facts about Labour Disputes in Tanzania

• Do you know that in every 10 incidents of termination of employment, 8 out of 10 employees will file a labour dispute challenging termination?
• Do you know that in 6 out of 8 referred disputes employers are penalised to pay compensation of at least 12 months’ salary for unfair termination?

If you own a business and you have employed some employees it is a fact that one day you will terminate their employment. therefore, according to the facts above you are at risk that your actions will be challenged at CMA or Labour Office and might be penalised for unfair termination.

According to the research done on Labour Disputes in Tanzania which involved more than 1,000 labour disputes over the past 10 years it was revealed that Employees are successful in challenging termination at a rate of more than 80%, i.e in every 100 labour disputes, 80 disputes ended in favour of employees and employers were penalised to pay compensation of not less than 12 Months salaries.