THE TERMS OF A CONTRACT

The Court held that where the parties had verbally agreed to a change in the terms
and conditions of employment, and that Contract of Employment specifically
states that any changes must be reduced to writing, then such changes would
not be binding and would be invalid.

TERMINATION OF FIXED TERM CONTRACTS

The Court found that where an employee was employed on a fixed term contract and that fixed term contract had expired, should he continue in his employment then a reasonable expectation of permanent employment has been created. As such any subsequent dismissal disguised as a reference to the fixed term contract would be unfair.

MISREPRESENTATION ON CV

The Labour Appeal Court has yet again determined that the termination of the employment of an employee who had misrepresented his qualifications on a Curriculum Vitae and on the application forms was fair. The Court held that the misrepresentation of a qualification which the Applicant did not possess amounted to gross dishonesty and that his dismissal was justified. The Court in a similar matter went onto state that the employee could not defend the misrepresentation by alleging that the employer should have verified this information itself and that had the employer made the effort it would have quickly found out that the qualifications represented were incorrect.

CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL

Where an employer has taken steps to try and remedy any claims raised by the employee then the employee will not be able to succeed in a constructive dismissal claim and in showing that the employer had made continued employment intolerable.

DISMISSAL ON THE BASIS OF AGE

When an employee had reached the prescribed age in terms of the industry provident fund this was sufficient to allow the company to overcome the onus of showing that termination on the basis of age was unfair. The Court did not come to the aid of the dismissed employee.

PRESCRIPTION

The Court held that a failure to promote is not an ongoing dispute i.e the dispute must be referred within 90 days of the Act or omission of which the employee complains, in other words within 90 days of the failure to promote; failure to do so would mean that any referral would be out of time.