Employment Law Explained

How long must I have worked to bring a claim?

The law states minimum qualifying periods that you must have worked before you can bringing a tribunal claim before an Employment Tribunal. These are as follows:

Qualifying Employment Period - Unfair Dismissal
1 year read note

Qualifying Employment Period - Written reasons for dismissal
1 year

Qualifying Employment Period - Redundancy Payment
2 years

Qualifying Employment Period - Discrimination on grounds of sex, race, disability, sexual orientation or religious belief
none

Qualifying Employment Period - Equal Pay
none

Qualifying Employment Period - Right to ordinary maternity leave
none

Qualifying Employment Period - Right to additional maternity leave
26 weeks at the beginning of the 14th week before the expected date of childbirth

Qualifying Employment Period - Parental leave
1 year

Qualifying Employment Period - Contract claim by employee
none

Qualifying Employment Period - Holiday pay (working time)
none

Unfair Dismissal - One-Year Rule

For unfair dismissal claims, an employee must have one year's continuous service.

If an employee is dismissed after 51 weeks service without notice, and in circumstances which do not permit summary termination for gross misconduct, the Tribunal can add the one week statutory notice, giving the minimum one year's service for an unfair dismissal claim. The last day of employment would then be the date when proper statutory notice would have expired.

Exceptions

Although generally at least one year's continuous employment is needed to be able to bring an unfair dismissal claim, if the dismissal is for one of the reasons below there is no qualifying period.

These are known as automatically unfair reasons and they include:

Health and Safety dismissal
Pregnancy related dismissal (only if the employer was aware the employee was pregnant)
Dismissal related to asserting a statutory right
Dismissal relating to Trade union membership or non-membership
Dismissal in connection with the national minimum wage
Dismissal connected with refusing to exceed the 48-hour working week
Dismissal for whistleblowing

Employers and employees need to be aware that just because someone does not have one year's service they are not automatically barred from bringing one of the above claims.

If the dismissal is related to discrimination on grounds of sex, race, age, disability, sexual orientation or religious belief, there is similarly no 1-year limit and no limit on the amount of damages the Tribunal can award for unfair dismissal.