There was no birthday cake and it otherwise seemed to pass
without acknowledgment, but 2022 marked the 50th
anniversary of access to an unfair dismissal jurisdiction for South
Australian employees. Over the following decade, many other
Australian states and territories followed suite, with the Federal
unfair dismissal regime taking shape in 1984.
Today, unfair dismissal applications have become a ubiquitous
part of the employment law landscape. With indexation, each year an
increasing proportion of the employees are likely to become
eligible to access the jurisdiction (from 1 July 2023, the high
income threshold will increase to $167,500).
While unfair dismissal laws have varied at the edges over time,
since the federalisation of employment laws in 2006, most employers
have at least developed a working understanding that when
dismissing an employee:
