Redundancy for ‘Operational reasons’ clarified

‘Genuine operational reasons’ offer an exclusion from unfair dismissal claims, but employers must be able to demonstrate the reason was genuine. By PETER VITALE

How does an employer demonstrate genuine operational reasons for a dismissal? The full bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) has clarified this exclusion from the unfair dismissal jurisdiction of the Workplace Relations Act.

The Howard Government’s new WorkChoices laws introduced the exclusion that if an employer can show that an employee’s employment was terminated for “genuine operational reasons”, the employee will not be able to make a claim that he or she was unfairly dismissed.