Employment & Industrial Relations

In this practice area

Employment and Industrial Relations collects the disputes between employers and employees and the review of the industrial-adjudication process. The judgments concern dismissal and its justification, the machinery of the Industrial Court, trade-union rights, and the statutory obligations that attach to the employment relationship.

Dismissal is the central subject. Judgments examine constructive dismissal and the test for it — whether a contract test or a reasonableness test applies in light of developments in industrial jurisprudence — and unfair dismissal for want of "just cause or excuse". A recurring vehicle is judicial review of an Industrial Court award under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012, raising procedural impropriety, irrationality and illegality in the way the award was reached. Sovereign and diplomatic immunity appears where an embassy is the employer, and the courts apply the restrictive doctrine of state immunity to decide whether the claim may proceed.

Trade-union questions form a distinct strand: trade-union activities and rights, the immunity of a union, the suspension or termination of a union leader, and the distinction the courts draw between dismissal for carrying out union activities and dismissal for misconduct occurring in that context. Statutory obligations also recur, including the joint and several liability of company directors for contributions under the Employees Provident Fund Act 1991.

The cases sit mainly in the High Court exercising its judicial-review jurisdiction over the Industrial Court, with appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court on questions of principle. As a whole the area shows how the Malaysian courts supervise the industrial-relations system — testing whether a dismissal was justified and whether the specialised tribunal acted lawfully — while protecting the collective rights that the trade-union framework confers. The reliance on judicial review as the route to the courts means much of the reasoning is as much about administrative law as about the substance of the employment relationship.