Employment Relations: Who Has the Right to Hire and Fire?

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The survival of all companies and organizations largely depends on the critical decisions and strategies adopted by the management to survive any economic situation and therefore remain a successful and profitable entity.

However this cannot be achieved without having a competent human resource to deliver the company objectives and operations, hence a given company will require employers creating a employee- employer relationship. This relationship is very vital and should remain professional with all the stake holders involved acting in accordance to the work ethics as provided by the company.

The employers therefore have a duty to uphold the integrity of the company while the employees have a duty to perform according to their mandate. Therefore if all this is maintained, an organization will run successfully while meeting its daily objectives leaving both the employer and employee very satisfied with their work and the company running successfully. (Vandome 2004, 45)

However this may not be always be the case, there are many situations that will always arise whereby the employer may feel that certain objectives of the company are not being met due to some king of hurdles associated with a certain employee. It therefore calls for the employee to terminate the working relationship they had in between them.

However there are many hurdles that prevent this from happening as there a lot of red tapes that govern how an employee should be fired. Due to this fact, there are many unions and organizations, governmental and non-governmental that oversees this exercise in order to ensure that an employee is not fired due to discrimination.

To a certain extent, these organizations do play a vital role in ensuring that the minorities or any disadvantaged group is not victimized by a more powerful entity, in this case the employer. Due to this, the Australian government has constantly urged and advocated for the right s of all workers to join trade unions in order to ensure that their rights are protected (Australia Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics 2006, 142).

There are many different stakeholders involved in the business world of any given entity. These stakeholders are; the Government, Employees and their Unions and the employers who represent the management. All this stakeholders play a vital role in ensuring that there is a balance achieved between the employer and employee whereby an imbalance would affect the different stakeholders adversely and differently.

Should there be an imbalance, the government will have a weakened economy, while the employees would lose their source of livelihood and businesses would collapse as seen in the recent economic recession whereby due to some negligence of some stakeholders, the world economy was greatly affected negatively. Nevertheless, these different stakeholders play different roles in ensuring that there is a balance between each stakeholder (Stalker 1997, 25)

First, the trade unions were established to protect the members, employees, from unfair treatment, discrimination and abuse of their rights by the employees. These trade unions have always championed for the rights of the workers and where they felt that a given worker was dismissed unfairly, they usually took up the case, usually without asking for payment.

Due to the large size of them, the trade unions have always had a bargaining power when it came to the rights of the employees making them a feared organization by both the employers and the government.

Therefore employers have been forced to abide by the laws in dismissing any employee. This laid down procedures have been very beneficial toward the protection of employees’ rights making the job market very stable. In addition the unions have made a significant input towards the legislation of labor laws where they have made significant contributions towards the labor reforms in order to match up with the current labor and business requirements.

Therefore for this stake holders, the rights of the employee come first and should be upheld at all items, therefore under the dictates of the labor unions, an employer does not have the right to fire at will but should follow the procedures laid down even if they would be rigorous or detrimental to a given organization (Balnave et al 2009, 58)

Secondly, the government is a stake holder whose roles are balanced between the interests of the employer and those of the employee. The law is always about getting a balance between the rights of the employees and employer. This balance is very crucial for the success of a business and also for the economy of the country.

Since thriving businesses influence the strength of the economy (Bamber et al. 2004, 46). Thus, the government is charged with making legislative laws that ensure the business fraternity runs smoothly without negatively affecting the other party which would translate to affecting the country’s economy. Therefore, the government acknowledges that not all the interests of either party can be met by the act to ensure there is a balance in between them.

In order to do this, the government has set up mechanisms to enable an understanding exists between the employee and employer, for instance by having tribunals and industrial courts that are dedicated towards commercial/ civil disputes. Therefore any aggrieved party can take his matter to the said tribunals/courts and have them sorted out, whereby the tribunal/ court reserves the final verdict.

Also the government acknowledges the rights of the employer, whereby they have made laws that allow an employer to fire an employee during a twelve month period after being hired for incompetency but not race, gender or disability issues, whereby the employer will not be liable to any legal litigations as the employee does not have any rights during this probation period.

Thirdly, employers’ have the right to critically evaluate and analyze an employee’s performance on a regular basis and check if he or she is at par with the goals of the organization. It is a basic fact that employees will always want the best staff in the company therefore the company will always work hard in achieving this caliber of employee’s unless it during redundancy whereby both the performing and non-performing employees may face the same predicament.

Therefore contrary to the belief that employers can fire indiscriminately, they only fire non performing employees which is not a bias ground for employment termination, but a vital ground for the optimum performance of the company and the well being of the employees and employers, who are the most significant stake holders in any given organization.

Therefore business entities should not just exist to provided employment and a source of livelihood to employees but should exist to meet its financial objectives without which both the employer and employee relationship would seize to exist (Australia Bureau of Statistics 1979, 56)

On the other hands due to labour laws, employers are faced with a lot of challenges. The labor laws have opened many doors whereby an employer can easily be sued for termination of an employee. The risk of litigation has gone beyond firing with courts ignoring the plight of the employers and his business but will more so focus on other issues like race, religion and gender when in the real case the termination was done based purely on the employees lack of performance (International Labor Organization 1999, 96).

The Law states that should an employee be fired or dismissed from his work, if he had served for less than 12 months, the employee is not legible for any legal remedy or entitled to any legal rights. Therefore under this case, the employer has a right to fire anybody without any hindrances or fear of a legal suit, apart from cases where the employer fired a person due to race, religious or physical challenges grounds.

Due to the diverse nature of people especially the human resource, an employer may make a mistake during the interview phase or employee hiring. The law allows him to correct that mistake before twelve months are over after the employee is hired thus the employee will not be liable to any legal litigation as this is usually a window period for the employee to correct any mistake that he/ she committed for the benefit of the business.

This window period allows for the employer to scrutinize and evaluate the performance of the employee and see to it that he has the potential to deliver on his mandate. If this was not the case, once a person was hired and proved to be incompetent, it would have been very difficult for the employee to fire an incompetent person thus posing a risk to the success of the company in future and in turn interfere with the business ethics throughout Australia (Hill et al. 2007, 124).

Therefore, the employers should be allowed to fire employees at will without any hurdles or litigations. This is so as no employer would fire a hardworking or competent employee as it would directly affect his company. Also the employer should be allowed to do so without having to undergo the rigorous process as dictated by labor laws as they serve as red tapes or bottlenecks in a company.

Due to these bottlenecks, a company’s success or efficiency is deeply curtailed since the management cannot make an abrupt decision which is common in business circles, like retrenchment of employees in order to cut down on costs. Without this freedom, businesses find it hard to expand, compete effectively and expand in accordance with the world economy or globalization.

In addition, an employer is charged with the vital role of making decisions that ensure that all the stakeholder of the company are well catered for and not exposed to risks, therefore by firing an employee does not necessarily translate to a bias action or warrants the attention of trade unions since an incompetent employee may result in a company going under thereby affecting other employees who had nothing to do with the issue.

Under such circumstances, the employer is usually the one left to shoulder the blame as his company goes under while the employees will usually look for employment in another company and continue with their endeavors, while the employers suffers from the incompetency of a given employee hence, closing down an organization which he/ she had built.

In addition, employers unlike employees do not have trade Unions that can champion for their rights should an employee act in an incompetent manner resulting to financial or operation difficulties of the given company (Campbell & Craig 2005, 148).

In conclusion an employee should be able to fire an employee at free will as he is the one who is charged with running the company effectively to achieve its target.

Therefore the employer will automatically have the best interests of the company at heart, unlike other stakeholders who represent different groups, some of which are not privy to the circumstances that led to the firing of a certain employee. Nevertheless, they should do so in a humane manner without any discrimination or bias, therefore making the role of other stakeholders equally important.

Reference List

Australia Bureau of Statistics. 1979. Year book. Bureau of statistics. Sydney.

Australia Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics. 2006. Official yellow book of Australia. Bureau of Statistics. Sydney.

Balnave, N. et al. 2009. Employment Relations in Australia. Wiley and Sons. Melbourne.

Bamber, G. Lansbury, R. & Wailes, N. 2004. International and comparative employment relations: globalisation and the developed market economies. Sage. London.

Campbell, D. & Craig, T. 2005. Organisations and the business environment. Butterworth-Heinemann. Oxford.

Hill, C. et al. 2007. Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach. John Wiley. Melbourne.

International Labor Organization 1999. Employment policies and industrial relations. International labor organization. London

Stalker, P. 1997. A survey of international labor. International Labor Organization.London.

Vandome, N. 2004.Getting a job in Australia: a step-by-step guide to finding work down under. How to Books Ltd. Melbourne.

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Employment Relations: Who Has the Right to Hire and Fire?

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