Workplace Law

Workplace Law

BUS228 Workplace Law Past Year Paper (2005)
Question 3

Case facts

    • Anastasia was employed as “Casual” hairdresser at Swish Hair Pty Ltd for five years.

    • She works from 12pm-5pm Tuesday-Friday as well as all day Saturday.

    • Last Friday, she arrived 5 minutes late to work and her boss ‘exploded’ by telling her he was ‘sick of her persistent lateness’.

    • She left work upon the repeated request of her boss and since then he has refused to allow her to work again.

    • Recently, she had also been a few minutes late to work due to the problems with public transport in her area and her boss had never said anything to her about it previously.

Issues

  i) At common law, has there been a breach of her employment contract?

At common law, only the issue of wrongfulness or unlawfulness of a dismissal allows a claim for damages by an employee. It does not ascertain the dismissal is fair or unfair.

Application

Scenario 1

In this case, Anastasia had breach her employment contract by coming late to work. Assuming her boss impliedly agreed for her to be late for work as he is silent about this issue recently. This does mean that Anastasia had the rights to come in late to work. As we know that, in a contract there is a stated working hours which an employee must follow. Failure to do so is equivalent to a breach of contract.   Adami v Maison De Luxe Ltd (1924) pg151

Scenario 2

Anastasia’s boss also has breached the contract by wrongfully dismissing her. In this case, Anastasia is a long term casual employee and been working for 5 years, she is entitled to a notice of termination. But her boss terminates her services without a notice and this is a summary dismissal. Whereby the dismissal is made with immediate effect and no payment is to be made by the employer, and the employment relationship comes to an end immediately. Therefore, to conclude that although she had breach her contract in the first...