No doctor's note, no family nearby, yet the Court still lifted his payout
A former worker's compensation for a flawed redundancy nearly doubled after Judge M S King, on 15 July 2026, lifted the Employment Relations Authority's award.
The Employment Court raised the payout from $8,000 to $15,000, resolving the only live issue in the worker's challenge to an earlier determination that he had been unjustifiably dismissed.
The worker, who had more than five years' service with the employer and had done work that included race meetings and trials, was made redundant after a process the Authority found was "truncated and incomplete." The Authority also concluded the employer fell well short of justifying the proposal that led to the redundancy. Those findings were not challenged.
Representing himself, the worker argued the $8,000 sat too low and sought $40,000. He said the Authority's figure had been influenced by a separate discrimination award he received in the Human Rights Review Tribunal, and that compensation should have been calculated cumulatively to reflect multiple breaches.
The Court disagreed on that point, finding the compensation had to relate strictly to the personal grievance upheld by the Authority, as the racial harassment he experienced had already been addressed by the Tribunal.
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