Why termination of employment is challenged by employees?

Introduction

It is a fact throughout a study of the Labour Dispute status in Tanzania for the past 10 years that, more than 95% of referred disputes at the CMA or Labour office were referred by the employees.

Another important fact is that more than 85% of the referred disputes by the employees are challenging the termination of 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 and chances are more likely to succeed in their claims.

It is effortless to engage or employ an employee in a contract of employment rather than terminating the services of the said employee. Most employers during termination commit some of the ‘Common Mistakes’ and hence lead to the challenge of the termination which becomes detrimental to the employer when such dispute is referred to CMA.

A study shows that Common Mistakes in Termination of employment contribute to about 46% per cent of Employers’ Common Mistakes. This shows that most employers are at fault during the termination process which involves the reasons and procedure to be followed.

In the book Employers’ Common Mistakes, the total number of mistakes of employers on reason and procedure of termination is 22 mistakes. This is the core area that produces most labour disputes.

Hereunder we are going to discuss some of the reasons used by employers to terminate employment which in a long run are detrimental to the employers.

Cover up the reason for termination

In most cases employers when they want to terminate an employee they don’t know the apparent reason for effecting such termination. The employer may not be satisfied with the performance or the behaviour of a concerned employee. Still, without knowing how to go about such a reason, the employer may assign any reason to justify termination. This is called a ‘cover-up reason’ or ‘disguised reason for termination’. In this circumstance, the real reason for termination is concealed by the employer and assigned other reasons such as a decrease or loss of business etc. the assigned reason is just a means to get the concerned employee out of the job.

When an employee who has been terminated by a ‘cover-up reason’ or ‘disguised reason’ challenge such termination at CMA he is likely to succeed on that claim because the employer has to prove that the reason for termination was valid reason and fair in the circumstance.