Plumber relocated from England to Christchurch but was dismissed after only two weeks
The Employment Relations Authority has awarded a British worker more than $60,000 in compensation after he left a plumbing company after just two weeks following his move from the UK.
The former employee has been medically unfit for work since being terminated five years ago and said the amount awarded was not enough to cover legal and medical costs.
In April 2016, he saw an advertisement placed by a recruiter for qualified plumbers to move to New Zealand. Despite the role’s 90-day trial period, he took the plunge and left England for Christchurch in August 2016.
“We did everything we could to make him feel welcome and make his move to New Zealand as easy as possible,” the employers told the Authority.
Soon after the worker’s commencement, the employer said it “became clear to him that [the worker] did not have the skills of a qualified plumber and this was not just the result of the differences between the UK and New Zealand plumbing requirements, it reflected a more fundamental ability concern”.
Later that week, the worker was called to a meeting, where his employers advised that they were concerned about his performance in light of a complaint received from a major client. At the conclusion of the meeting, the worker contacted the recruiter, who reiterated that he was not meeting the company’s needs or “his end of the bargain”. The worker took this to mean that he had been dismissed. He filed a claim with the Employment Relations Authority before returning to England just over a week later.
The hearing
The company asserted that it did not dismiss the worker, and believed he had “resigned or abandoned his employment”. However, the Authority was satisfied that a person in the worker’s position would have taken his conversation with the recruiter to be a “sending away”.
The Authority therefore concluded that, although the employers themselves did not dismiss the worker, the recruiter, acting as the company’s agent, did. It also commented that the dismissal process was “so flawed, there was no basis to decide that dismissal was appropriate”.
Remedy
Having found that the worker was unjustifiably dismissed, the Authority turned to consider the appropriate remedy. It commented that the worker had “an extremely adverse reaction to his dismissal” and was deemed medically unable to work in the five years since. This led the Authority to award $35,000 in compensation, $12,480 in lost wages, and $4,269.27 in expenses arising from the worker’s return to England. Three months later, the Authority added an additional $8,904 in costs.
Despite this, Stuff reported that the worker’s costs outweighed his remedy. “Where is the justice?” he reportedly said. “We won – but we’ve still lost.”
Key Takeaways
- A dismissal may occur constructively – that is, through an employer’s conduct rather than their words
- As such, employers should take care not to lead employees to believe they are being dismissed
- Where an employee moves overseas for work, their employer may be liable for additional travel costs incurred from an unjustified dismissal
