Employment Law Issues - Assignment Example

Name: Tutor: Task: Date: PART A Question one a) In this case Adami was suing Maison de Luxe Ltd for wrongfully dismissing him from a managerial position thus breaching the contract that was written on 27th march 1922. Adam was dismissed after working for a period of less than three years. Though Adam claims that he was unfairly dismissed from his position, the defendant, Maison de Luxe Ltd, on the other hand admits the dismissal and claims that the dismissal was fair since the complainant, Adami, misbehaved in service provision by refusing to execute his responsibilities and intentionally not obeying the reasonable orders of an employer as directed. The complainant, Adami was employed by Maison de Luxe Ltd as hall manager for three years period. Maison de Luxe Ltd owned amusement hall that was used for dances and other entertainments. As a hall manager, Adami was supposed to involve and fully control the company’s staffs attached to any hall, owned by Maison de Luxe Ltd. Adami was also responsible for generally supervising how the business is being executed by the company. b) The two parties were relying on legal principle of obedience. Maison de Luxe Ltd was accusing Adami for intentionally disobeying the stated orders and refusing to do his duties. Adami on the other hand was accusing Maison de Luxe Ltd for disobeying the signed contract and dismissing him before the end of the contract. Adami, the appellant, claimed that it was unlawful to breach an individual special contract by dismissing him from his position. According to Adami, the signed contract was bigger than order disobedience. He expected Maison de Luxe Ltd to obey the signed contract by not breaching it. Maison de Luxe Ltd on the other hand believed that they obeyed the law and their move to dismiss Adami was not wrongly done since Adami intentionally disobeyed the orders of the company and refused to perform his duties. They claimed that willful disobedience of essential orders and denial to perform once duties was enough to breach any contract signed. Maison de Luxe Ltd action was therefore based on legal principle of obedience. The company defense team claimed that Adami was dismissed in the middle of his contract because he did not want to follow the company’s reasonable orders. Both parties, that is, the appellant and the defense, therefore relied on legal principle of obedience. Question two The outcome of the case was that the complainant, Adami, was correctly dismissed by the defendant, Maison de Luxe Ltd. The court provided several reasons for its decision that favored Maison de Luxe Ltd. The court believed that Maison de Luxe Ltd gave Adami, the complainant, a lawful order that he later disobeyed them due to his own reasons. The court also ruled that under the signed contract, it was the duty of the complainant to obey lawful orders and directions of the company. Therefore since Adami broke the contract by intentionally disobeying the reasonable orders of the company, the court ruled out that Maison de Luxe Ltd legally dismissed him from his position as the company’s manager (High Court of Australia). The court believed that if there is a prevalence of a clear refusal of one party to obey the contract’s terms, the other party has a right to end the contract. The court also argued that in all cases, it is important to determine whether the party’s conduct does not intend to bind by its provisions. The rule of law states that where two parties are contracting, each party need to effectively involve as stipulated in the contract and in case the action of a single party might jeopardize the whole process, then it is important to breach the contract. Breaching of the contract in this case is very important since the misconduct of a single party affects the performance of another party. The court ruled the case in favor of Maison de Luxe Ltd since it believed that in a situation in which the servant is required by the contract signed to obey all lawful orders of the masters and later deliberately or intentionally disobey the reasonable orders by refusing to do the duties as stated in the contract, then the master has a right to breach the contract by immediately dismissing the person from his or her position. Therefore by considering all these, the court ruled out that Adami was legally dismissed by Maison de Luxe Ltd. I do agree with the court that Adami was rightly dismissed from his position as a manager in Maison de Luxe Ltd. Adami did not put the interest of the company first but rather preferred his more by disobeying the company’s orders of working on Saturday afternoons. He preferred to attend on his Saturday’s business and ignored his duties in Maison de Luxe Ltd. His refusal to undertake company’s instructions was a clear indication that he was not ready to sacrifice for the company so as to achieve the strategic goals of Maison de Luxe Ltd. Therefore his dismissal was right. Question three Several lessons are displayed in this case. Obedience is an important aspect to consider in any working environment. Employers need to ensure that the orders formulated are reasonable and can be obeyed easily by employees. Employees need to understand that it is their duty to respect and undertake the reasonable orders formulated by employers. An employer has a right to breach a contract by dismissing an employee who does not obey the company’s reasonable orders and who does not execute his or her duties as stipulated in the contract. The case clearly educates on the importance of concentrating fully on the task and sacrificing for the best interest of the company. Adami was unable to fully execute his duty since he was involving in other business dealings that were not inline with the company’s activities, thus he was not able to execute his Saturdays duties which led to his dismissal. Adami was not ready to sacrifice for the company and instead decided to disobey the reasonable orders of the company and concentrate on his own business. A person can learn from the case that a contract is an effective document that both parties, mentioned in the contract, need to adhere with and strictly respect all the details in it. In case the contract states that the servant need to respect every lawful order of his or her master, then the worker need to follow all the reasonable orders of the master or employer. If the servant decides to intentionally disobey the master’s reasonable orders, then the master can immediately terminate the servant’s employment. This is possible because the contract gives an employer the power to do so. Question four Even though several employments’ contracts list particular job requirements, the court normally recognizes that a worker can be requested to execute duties that are not listed as their main responsibilities but are reasonably incidental to the task. This therefore implies that workers are expected to respect and execute all reasonable orders formulated by an employer and failure to undertake the task is a breach of contract. Reasonable orders are instructions at the workplace that can be obeyed very easily, though many employees normally tend to disobey them intentionally. In Adami and Maison de Luxe Ltd case, Adami was expected to obey the reasonable orders formulated by the company. Maison de Luxe Ltd decided to hold dances on Saturday afternoons thus instructing Adami to work also on Saturday afternoons. Adami however did not obey the company’s reasonable orders thus breaching the signed contract. Adami’s intentional disobedience of reasonable orders made Maison de Luxe Ltd to dismiss him from his position as hall manager. The dismissal was ruled at the court to be correct since the instructions given to Adami was simple and easy to obey. The contract’s requirements normally determine if an order formulated by an employer is reasonable or not. In case the requirement to work in the evenings or weekends is contractual, then an employee has no option than to obey the reasonable orders. Adami was expected to obey the reasonable orders and failure to do so was a breach of contract. In a university setting, lecturers are expected to obey the reasonable orders of working in the evening and weekends. In most cases the lecturer’s contract normally relates specifically with the job requirements. The contract can specify lecturers’ specific tasks and time to execute the tasks. Even though marking of examination scripts is not usually mentioned within the requirements of the contract, a section of lecturer’s task is to examine students and thus marking of examination scripts can be observed as reasonably incidental to the task. This therefore implies that a lecture cannot refuse to undertake the duties of examining students and marking examinations even if the duties are not specified in the contract. Regardless of whether they are mentioned in the contract or not, Students’ assessment and marking of examinations are reasonable orders that lecturers need to undertake (Lockton 64). In case the contract specify the time lecturers are suppose to work and weekends and evenings are not stated, then employees have a right to disobey the orders and the university’s orders can be considered as unreasonable. This kind of preposition was initially stated within the common case of Secretary of State for employment v ASLEF in 1972. In the case, ASLEF performed a work-to-rule that caused workers to strongly adhere to the rule book, but in a manner that caused total disturbance to railway system. The court of appeal however ruled out that workers were in breach of contract. It was ruled that in case a worker took steps to intentionally disrupt the undertaking of an employer, then he will be breaching the contract. Many contracts normally direct workers to faithfully serve employers and promote their commercial interests. As long as the company’s orders are reasonable, workers are expected to obey them, failure to do so can lead to their dismissal. PART B In many organizations, employees are expected to work tirelessly and aim to display firm’s good image. They are expected to execute tasks assigned to them by employers and develop a positive contribution to firm’s reputation and growth. Employees need to view themselves as part of the firm and should be ready to be transferred from one branch to another. They need to avoid any misdeeds activities that might come their way. Workers are also expected to defend the company’s products and services and report any misdeeds to the employer. Under normal condition an employee is not suppose to permit business misconducts that might negatively affect the company without being reported. Failure to report misdeeds to the employer is normally considered as a case of disloyalty and disobedience to the company (Memo 870). Memo (870) argues that Employees need to effectively provide personal services to the company. Absenteeism at work place should be reported to the employers as soon as possible. High rate of absenteeism normally reduce output per worker, which in turn reduces the company’s performance. Workers therefore should be ready and willing to execute their duties for the benefit of an organization. They need to ensure that all activities that might result into absenteeism or strikes are reported to the employer. In order to ensure that all the misdeeds are reported, workers should be competent, take reasonable care in executing the duties, obedient, honest, and account for profits. Employees need to ensure that misdeeds such as frauds are reported to the employer. For the past few years, many organizations have recorded cases of fraud. Fraudulent activities have been at high rate in many organizations due to top management’s ignorance on work ethics and unwillingness of employees to report any suspicious activities that might result into fraud. Both junior and senior staffs need to pay close attention to each others behaviors and actions since greediness at workplace has destroyed several organizations, drained the investments of shareholders and left behind innocent workers without job. This therefore implies that for workers to be on the safe side, they need to ensure that they are very keen at workplace and report any identified misdeeds to the employer (Hardy 230). Reporting the misdeeds such fraudulent activity to the employer is very essential. Workers can find themselves avoiding jail sentence by refusing to cooperate and reporting any fraudulent activities that they might come across. For example, in Walt Pavlo case, Pavlo found himself in trouble when he accepted to participate in financial statement fraud at MCI/WorldCom. Pavlo was accused for money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice and sentenced for forty one months. At MCI/WorldCom Pavlo was a senior manager in bill collections, customer payments, credits and accounts’ reconciliations. Pavlo identified some misdeeds being done by senior managers but did not report, instead he decided to keep quite and collaborate in manipulating the financial statements of the company. Pavlo, his supervisors and colleagues formulated ways that make an organization to like it was attaining its profits growth projection. He learnt how to hide uncollected debt that enhanced the assets and profits of the company. Therefore, it was these fraudulent activities that led him to jail (Association of certified fraud examiners, p 2). There are several forms of misconduct that normally takes place within the work place. Workers normally fail to report these unethical behaviors even if they happen to come across them every year. The national business ethics survey stated that about fifty five percent of workers accepted that they normally report ethical misconducts observed at workplace while forty five percent of workers said that they usually fail to report misdeeds to their employer. This therefore implies that many workers normally fail to report the misdeeds to their employers, which in many cases affects the employee and the company. References Association of certified fraud examiners. How management can prevent fraud in the workplace. 2010, p1-12 .Retrieved from < http://www.acfe.com/documents/tone-at-the-top-research.pdf> Lockton, Deborah . Employment Law Q&A 4/e, Routledge. 2005. Pg 64. FL Memo .Employment 2006: law and practice, human resources. FL Memo Ltd, 2006. Pg 870. High Court of Australia. Adami v Maison de Luxe Ltd [1924] HCA 45; (1924) Retrieved from Hardy, Stephen. Labour Law in Great Britain. Kluwer Law International. 2011. Pg 230. Read More