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Industrial Court upheld dismissal of cashier who delayed depositing Company’s collections

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ZUL RAFIQUE & partners’ Employment & Industrial Relations team, Thavaselvi Pararajasingam and Tan Hao Wei succeeded in defending IOI Building Services Sdn Bhd in an unfair dismissal claim by a former employee who was charged for misconduct relating to failure to deposit the Company’s car park collections into the bank in a timely manner in the case of Thaviambhai a/p Subramaniam v IOI Building Services Sdn Bhd.

In this case, the Industrial Court rejected the employee’s defence that she delayed in depositing the collections because she had too much work load and she did not receive the autopay collections reports. The Court held that reconciling the car park collections reports and depositing the collections into the bank were two separate matters.

Although the employee had over ten years’ service with no past record of misconduct, the Court held that it was not unreasonable to dismiss an employee with an unblemished record for a single act of insolence when the misconduct is grave. The employee was required to collect car park collections and deposit the collections on behalf of the Company. Therefore, it was reasonable for the Company to expect a high standard of care and conduct from the employee.

On the issue of the Domestic Inquiry, the Court held that the law does not expect a Domestic Inquiry to have all the trappings of a formal trial in a court of law. Suffice that the employee was not denied a fair hearing and that she was given the opportunity to cross examine the Company’s witnesses as well as put forward her case during the Inquiry.

For more insights into this area of law please contact our Partners in Employment & Industrial Relations Practice Group: P Jayasingam, Wong Keat Ching & Thavaselvi Pararajasingam.