Wrongful Termination Lawyers in Melbourne

“Wrongful termination” covers the sackings unfair dismissal cannot reach

“Wrongful termination” is not a term you will find anywhere in the Fair Work Act. It is shorthand for three separate claims that do the same job, and one of them probably fits your situation. There is the general protections claim, which applies where you were dismissed for exercising a workplace right. There is the breach of contract claim, for when the employer ignored the notice, bonus or process terms you signed up to. And there is the challenge to a sham redundancy, where the “restructure” was a story built around getting rid of you.

These claims matter because they reach where unfair dismissal cannot. They carry no minimum service period and no high income threshold, so an executive on $300,000 can claim, and general protections compensation has no cap at all. It is not unusual for one dismissal to raise two of the three at once, which is why we look across employment law before settling on which claim to run.

If the dismissal happened this week, you are inside a 21-day window right now. Call 1800 130 120 today and we will tell you on a free call which claim fits.

Sacked after doing something you were entitled to do?

The general protections provisions make it unlawful to dismiss you because you exercised a workplace right. In practice the files we run look like this. Someone is dismissed a fortnight after lodging a bullying complaint, or “made redundant” the month they get back from parental leave. Someone is terminated partway through a run of certified sick leave, or quietly managed out after asking why their pay did not match the award.

The law gives you a genuine structural advantage here. Once you show the right and the dismissal, the employer must prove your complaint, your leave or your pay query played no part in the decision. Employers with thin paper trails struggle badly with that burden, and experienced defence lawyers know it, which is why these claims settle.

A termination letter that says “restructure” gives you the employer’s version of events. It carries no legal weight of its own. What a court wants to know is what actually moved the decision-maker, and the timing usually answers that.

When the contract itself was broken

Contract claims are the second limb, and for senior employees they are often the more valuable one. You might have been dismissed without the contractual notice or payment in lieu. A bonus you had already earned may have gone unpaid because the termination landed days before the payment date. Or the employer skipped a disciplinary procedure that was written into your contract or into a policy incorporated by it. These claims run in the courts with a six-year limitation period, and what you recover is what the contract promised. Where equity, deferred incentives or restraint questions are in play, gardening leave covers the exit side, because terms and restraints get negotiated in the same conversation. Where the employer collapses before any of it is paid, the recovery question moves out of employment law altogether and into liquidation, where the order in which creditors get paid decides what you actually see.

The dressed-up redundancy

A genuine redundancy needs three things: the role truly gone, consultation done properly under the applicable award or agreement, and redeployment considered. When a “redundancy” arrives shortly after a complaint, a pregnancy announcement or a workers compensation claim, and the role reappears under a new title within months, it is usually neither genuine nor safe for the employer. We test redundancies against all three requirements before you sign anything, especially a deed of release. A signed deed can wipe out every claim on this page. It will not, though, cover what the employer says about you afterwards. A manager who briefs clients on why you left, or a reference call that turns into an accusation, is defamation of character territory rather than a Fair Work problem.

What to do in the next 48 hours

Do not sign the deed of release. Save your contract, the termination letter, your complaint emails and anything showing the timeline. Then call 1800 130 120 or send the form on this page. The first call is free and confidential, and by the end of it you will know which claim you have, how long you have got, and what happens next. If the reason behind your dismissal was a protected attribute rather than a workplace right, start at discrimination lawyers instead.