Constructive Dismissal
If you are forced to leave your job because of your employer’s conduct you could consider a claim for constructive dismissal under the Unfair Dismissals Act. You may be forced to resign your position with or without notice. To mount a successful claim for constructive dismissal, you must show your resignation is justified because of a fundamental breach of contract on the part of your employer. The breach must be serious enough to require your resignation or that your employers conduct was so unreasonable or intolerable you had no other option but to resign. In assessing whether it was reasonable for you to resign, the employers conduct will subjectively be considered, the conduct of both parties will be considered and the conduct of the parties as a whole or cumulative effect must be looked at.
There is a generally accepted requirement that you the employee should engage, substantially use and exhaust all internal mechanisms which might be available to you in a given workplace before tendering a resignation unless you can show that the said remedies are unfair. This places a very high burden on an employee who does not use the internal grievance procedures. The employee may have an understandable lack of faith in the employer’s ability to properly or effectively address the grievances but unless the facts are exceptional, constructive dismissal cases where the employee has not used the internal grievance procedure and wins will be a minority of cases. Before resigning you should use the company’s complaints or grievance procedure, use any Trade Union or Industrial relations procedures available to you and seek legal advice.
If you cannot resolve the issue with your employer and you feel you have no choice but to resign, you may claim you were constructively dismissed by submitting a complaint with the Workplace Relations Commission. You must bring your claim within 6 months from the date your employment finished. This time limit may be extended to 12 months where there are exceptional circumstances that prevented you from lodging a claim within 6 months.
