A dismissal implies that the university decides to terminate the employment subject to the employee’s individual term of notice. Before a decision on dismissal is made, the employee will be consulted and informed of the reason for the dismissal.
Whatever the reason, a dismissal must be for good cause and be justified by the conduct of the employee or the circumstances of the university.
Procedures and rules differ depending on whether the employee is employed under a collective agreement or as a public servant or according to similar terms as public servants.
Dismissal due to the circumstances of the university could, for example, be redundancies as a result of cutbacks, restructuring and streamlining.
What characterises these situations is that the employee is ‘not to blame’ or not responsible for the reason for the redundancies. In these cases, the university will try to reduce the number of redundancies by remedial measures and, if possible, redeployment.
In case of dismissal due to circumstances at the university, the management is obliged to notify the liaison committee to ensure that the employees’ views and suggestions may be included in the basis for the management’s final decision. In case of dismissals due to structural or financial conditions, discussions will take place in the local liaison committees, but the senior management team must inform the joint union representatives if more than five employees will be affected.
In addition, it may be necessary to dismiss employees for individually justified reasons.
This may, for example, be the case if the employee is no longer able to perform his or her duties due to illness, or if the employee is not able or does not want to perform the tasks of the position at such level and in such way as the management may reasonably expect.
The individual reasons may be many. In addition to qualitative and/or quantitative shortcomings in the performance of duties, there may be problems in terms of cooperation or any form of breach of the employment contract on the part of the employee.
Before an employee is dismissed for individual reasons, the manager will normally seek to solve the problems in cooperation with the employee.
If an employee commits material breach of his or her employment contract, the university may dismiss the employee summarily, which means that the employment will be terminated with immediate effect.
In case of dismissal of an employee, the university will inform the union representative of the names of the employees whom the university intends to dismiss. The union representative will be notified at the same time as the employees in question or immediately thereafter. At the same time, the employee is encouraged to involve the relevant union representative or another observer in the process.