Labor Law is a 10% sitting, and within it a disproportionate number of questions follow one route: an employee is dismissed, and the problem asks whether the dismissal was valid and what the employer owes. Answering that route well is worth more than reading another chapter.
This article is the structure of that route.
The four-step analysis
Every dismissal question, without exception, runs in this order. Answer out of order and you will answer the wrong question.
- Is there an employment relationship? If there is none, no labor tribunal has jurisdiction over the dismissal claim.
- What kind of employment is it? Regular, probationary, project, seasonal, fixed-term — because the protection against dismissal depends on it.
- What is the ground, and is it a just cause or an authorized cause? The two categories come from different provisions, carry different procedures, and lead to different liabilities.
- Was the procedure complied with? The notice requirements attach to the ground; a valid ground pursued without the procedure is still an illegal dismissal, with consequences.
Only then does the question of liability become answerable.
Just cause versus authorized cause
The distinction is not vocabulary. It determines the answer to three separate questions.
| Just cause | Authorized cause | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The employee's own act or omission | A ground arising from the business or the law |
| The consequence the question usually asks | Whether dismissal was justified at all | Whether the requirements and the process were met |
| What the employer may owe | Generally nothing, if the cause is proved and the procedure followed | Separation pay, in the cases the law provides |
The examinable mistake is treating every dismissal as a just-cause question. If the facts describe redundancy, retrenchment, closure or disease, you are in the authorized-cause analysis, and the questions are about the conditions and the process.
The procedure, in sequence
For a dismissal on a just cause, the sequence is the notice pair: a notice informing the employee of the grounds and giving the opportunity to explain, and a notice of the decision. For an authorized cause, the requirements include the written notice to the employee and to the appropriate agency, within the period the rules fix.
Two habits:
- Write the sequence, in order, as steps. A procedure answer that lists the steps in the wrong order is a procedure answer that is wrong.
- Say what the defect produces. A dismissal for a just cause but without the procedure is illegal, and the consequence is the illegal-dismissal consequence — not a lesser one.
Illegal dismissal: the remedies, and the arithmetic
When a dismissal is illegal, the question becomes: what is the employer liable for?
The examinable elements:
- Reinstatement — the primary remedy, with its alternative (separation pay in lieu of reinstatement) where reinstatement is no longer feasible.
- Backwages — computed from the date of dismissal to the date of reinstatement, with the qualifications jurisprudence has built around it (including what happens while an appeal is pending, and the treatment of earnings elsewhere).
- Separation pay in lieu of reinstatement, where that is the remedy.
- Other money claims — unpaid wages, overtime, leave conversions, 13th-month pay — which are usually pleaded alongside and are computed separately.
Note the Bulletin's rule: computations involve only basic arithmetic, and in Criminal Law there is to be no arithmetic on penalty periods. In Labor, the arithmetic is simple, but the choice of the base is not: know what backwages are computed from, and what is excluded.
Money claims as a separate question
Many problems do not involve dismissal at all. They concern unpaid entitlements, and the analysis is a different one:
- Is the employee covered? (Coverage depends on the relationship test, and on the exclusions the Code and its rules provide.)
- What is the entitlement — hours, wage, a leave, a premium, a statutory benefit?
- What are the conditions of entitlement?
- What is the amount, computed on the correct base?
- Has the claim prescribed? Money claims have a period; and a claim filed after it is lost even if correct.
That last step is the one candidates forget, and it is the one that turns a correct computation into a wrong answer.
The procedural overlay
Labor claims are not litigated like ordinary civil actions, and the answer must reflect it:
- Which body has jurisdiction — the labor arbiter or the commission, depending on the claim and the amount, and the distinction matters.
- The mandatory conciliation that precedes some claims.
- The period to appeal, and to whom.
A labor answer that computes the liabilities correctly but names the wrong forum has answered the substantive question and lost the procedural one — and in a paper built on practical questions, both halves are marked.
Contractor and subcontractor liability
This is the specific question that unites the relationship test and money claims, and it appears often:
- Is the arrangement a genuine contracting arrangement — substantial capital, the power to control its own employees, an identifiable service?
- If labour-only, the contractor is treated as the employer's agent, and the employer is liable jointly and severally for the statutory obligations.
- What the employee may claim, and from whom, follows from the classification.
Learn the classification test properly — it is short — and the liability answers follow mechanically.
Retirement
The retirement block asks two things: who may retire and when, and what the benefit is. The syllabus names several statutes, including the one amending the retirement age for certain workers.
Two consequences to state: whether retirement is compulsory or optional at the stated age, and how the benefit is computed where there is no collective agreement or an insufficient one. Also note: retirement for underground or surface mine workers has its own rule, which the syllabus names separately — a precise, cheap mark.
A practice structure that works
Weekly, in the last six months:
- One full dismissal problem, twelve minutes, written: relationship, kind of employment, ground, procedure, remedies.
- One money-claim problem, twelve minutes: coverage, entitlement, conditions, amount, prescription, forum.
- One table drill: 10 minutes rebuilding the table of periods and rates from memory.
That is forty minutes a week for the sitting's heaviest block. It is enough to make dismissal and money-claim questions automatic, and those are the questions the paper will ask.
For the sitting's map, see how to study Labor Law; for the procedural overlay in more detail, labor jurisdiction and procedure.