Immediate termination of employment

What it means

Immediate termination ends the employment on the day the written document reaches the other side. Unlike a notice of termination no notice period runs, and the Labour Code allows it only on the grounds it lists itself.

The employer may use it where the employee has been convicted of an intentional criminal offence by a final judgment, or has breached work discipline seriously. The employee may use it where wages went unpaid for fifteen days beyond the due date, where a medical opinion says the work endangers their health and no other work was offered, or where their life or health is under immediate threat.

It is not to be confused with ending employment during probation, which also has no notice period but needs no reason at all. Immediate termination is, by contrast, an exceptional step on precisely defined grounds, and if it turns out invalid the consequences for the employer are far heavier.

How it works in practice

The ground has to be described in facts that cannot be mistaken for another one, and it cannot be changed afterwards; that holds for every termination of employment by one side alone. The employer has two months from learning of the ground and no more than a year from the ground arising; the employee has one month.

An employee who ends the relationship this way for reasons on the employer’s side is entitled to wage compensation of two months’ average earnings. The employer still issues the employment confirmation and deregisters the person from the Social Insurance Agency and the health insurer within the statutory period.

Before it is delivered we check that the employee is not in a protected group: an employer cannot terminate immediately with a pregnant employee, someone on maternity or parental leave, or a single parent of a young child. Where a union operates, the termination has to be discussed with it first.

What to watch out for

An employer reaches for immediate termination over late arrivals or a single unexcused absence, although that is usually a less serious breach of discipline, which has to be reprimanded in writing first, with a warning that notice may follow. The employee sues within two months, the court declares the termination invalid, and the company pays wage compensation for the whole length of a dispute that runs for years.

Immediate termination takes effect only on delivery. If the employer sends it to an outdated address rather than the one the employee gave when signing the employment contract or reported later, the employment continues and the two-month window for terminating may run out in the meantime.