[SINGAPORE] A company involved in construction projects was ordered to pay a former senior manager S$11,437.50 for wrongful dismissal despite giving him salary in lieu of notice, after the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) found that complying with his contract did not necessarily mean the dismissal was justified under the Employment Act.<\/p>\n
Tribunal Magistrate Jared Kang awarded the claimant the sum as compensation for harm, plus S$70 in disbursements, on Jan 26. However, he rejected the man\u2019s claim that his employer had discriminated against him after learning of his mental health condition.<\/p>\n
The parties were identified as \u201cMr C\u201d and \u201cRPL\u201d in the judgment published on Friday (Aug 7), as ECT cases are heard in private. RPL, whose industry was not specified, obtained permission in May to appeal the January decision on a question of law.<\/p>\n
In his 344-page grounds, Kang described dismissal law as \u201ca little more layered, difficult and unclear than it perhaps needed to be\u201d, and suggested that legislative attention could be paid to the matter.<\/p>\n
The case<\/h2>\n
C joined RPL as a senior construction manager in July 2024 on a monthly salary of S$9,000. He was later confirmed, received a S$10,011 annual bonus and had his monthly salary raised to S$9,150.<\/p>\n
In June 2025, he was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety, \u201clikely precipitated by long working hours and insomnia\u201d. After medical leave, RPL moved him from a construction site to its headquarters, where he worked regular hours on a tender project.<\/p>\n
RPL dismissed him a day after the tender was submitted, without giving a reason. It invoked a contractual clause allowing either party to end his employment with one week\u2019s notice or salary in lieu, and paid him his full salary for August.<\/p>\n
C sought S$18,000 for lost income and harm, arguing that he was dismissed because he had disclosed his condition. He cited his earlier confirmation, bonus and pay rise, followed by his reassignment and dismissal without any warning or formal performance feedback.<\/p>\n
RPL denied discrimination, saying it had granted him medical leave, offered counselling and assigned him regular working hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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It also cited concerns about his performance and suitability, while maintaining that he was not dismissed for any particular reason.<\/p>\n
Why RPL lost<\/h2>\n
Kang accepted that RPL\u2019s response to C\u2019s diagnosis was consistent with accommodation, rather than discrimination.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The evidence therefore did not show that his condition was probably the reason for his dismissal.<\/p>\n
But failing to prove discrimination did not mean that RPL automatically had a valid reason to dismiss him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kang explained that the contract governed how the employment could be ended, through notice or payment in lieu. The Employment Act posed a separate question: whether there was \u201cjust cause or excuse\u201d for the dismissal.<\/p>\n
RPL proved one specific performance lapse involving C\u2019s handling of a concrete-supply shortage. Kang also accepted that some wider performance or suitability concerns probably existed, but found that their extent and seriousness had not been established.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, there was \u201clittle contemporaneous material\u201d showing serious or persistent problems, and it did not call as witnesses the managers who had assigned and assessed C\u2019s tender work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Its continued assignment of important work to him also \u201csat uneasily\u201d with its later claims about his suitability.<\/p>\n
Kang therefore found that C had shown that RPL lacked a sufficiently established and serious reason to dismiss him.<\/p>\n
Why the ruling matters<\/h2>\n
Kang said the parties\u2019 arguments reflected wider uncertainty in the legal framework.\u00a0<\/p>\n
RPL treated compliance with the contractual termination clause as substantially answering the statutory claim, while C focused on proving discrimination because of how he understood the Tripartite Guidelines on Wrongful Dismissal. The difficulty, Kang added, was that \u201cwrongful dismissal\u201d performs more than one legal function.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At common law, it generally concerns a breach of the employment contract. Under the Employment Act and Employment Claims Act, it is also used for a claim arising from dismissal without \u201cjust cause or excuse\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kang noted that some of the confusion arose because wording inherited from an older industrial-relations system remained even as employment policy and the institutions handling dismissal disputes changed.\u00a0While some of the resulting uncertainty could be managed by the courts, Kang said that the \u201cremainder would be placed upon a more secure footing by legislative attention\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It has been ordered to pay a former manager over S$11,400, with permission to appeal on a question of law [SINGAPORE] A company involved in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}