Redundancy Claims and Entitlements

The recent decision of A Senior Developer v A Government Department is a very useful summary of the law on redundancy and centered around the employee’s claim for redundancy post liquidation of the company he worked for. The employee was involved in a dynamic start up company but ultimately was caught up in a very unfortunate situation whereby he was placed on layoff and the employer failed to communicate with him thereafter. The employee was ultimately contacted by the liquidator of the company. The employee had underrstood that there may be further work available for him.The employee was ultimately out of time to claim a statutory redundancy payment  (2 years or 104 weeks from date of dismissal) however the Workplace Relations Commission referred to a level of discretion it had to consider when the 104 weeks ran from and noted“In this case, the complainant did not attend his workplace from late February 2016. However, he was available to the CEO of the Company from this time forward, who appeared to call on him to support the Chinese market……”.The Workplace Relations Commission also noted that there was a “…blatant breach of the company’s responsibilities to address the complainant on either notice of his proposed dismissal or provision of a redundancy certificate”.The Workplace Commission concluded that the employee’s employment ended “one week after the CEO informed the complainant of the realistic prospect of the relaunch of his employment from temporary layoff” in 2017 and therefore the employee was entitled to a statutory redundancy payment.