A recent decision by a Singapore Employment Claims Tribunal underscores the significant divergence between the common law and statutory approaches to wrongful dismissal. For the first time, a tribunal has concluded that a contractually compliant termination effected for "no reason" can nevertheless be "wrongful" in the statutory sense.
Details follow. Please note that leave to appeal has been granted.
The Employment Claims Tribunals ("ECT") in Singapore have begun to publish decisions, and it appears likely that this practice will prove highly impactful. The first published tribunal decision (handed down in May 2026) suggests that the statutory protection against wrongful dismissal – contrary to previous perception – significantly deviates from the position at common law. This, in combination with the subsequently published decision in JJF v JJG [2026] SGECT 9 ("JJF"), discussed below, has provoked much discourse.
The statutory protection against dismissal "without just cause or excuse", or wrongful dismissal, is not new (see section 14 of the Employment Act 1968). Although this provision has been in place since 1973, judicial interpretation is only now emerging. (For many years, the statutory protection applied only to blue-collar workers and other lower-paid employees; as those claims were heard by the Ministry of Manpower which did not publish its decisions, there was little to no transparency around how the statute was applied in practice.)
In 2019, the...
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