Oops
“Unfortunately, rather than pursuing further discussion at the invitation of Mr Satori, the applicant engaged lawyers who sent the employer a very strongly worded five-page letter of demand. This communication from the applicant’s lawyers on 11 October 2016, did not enhance the prospects for any rectification of the applicant’s concerns, but instead acted to galvanise the termination of the employment. In most employment relationships, a strongly worded letter of demand from lawyers acting for an employee would be unlikely to be conducive to the continuation of the employment……….Unfortunately, the applicant (and/or her advisors), has appeared to misconstrue the concept of constructive dismissal, and she has translated the employer’s responses to her understandable concerns into conduct which was artificially elevated to represent the repudiation of the employment. A constructive dismissal is not established simply because an employee decides to treat the conduct of an employer as the repudiation of the employment. The conduct of the employer will be the true initiator of the termination of employment only if it can be objectively and properly established to have been incompatible with the continuation of the employment.
Johnson v Granite Transformations Pty Ltd (2017) FWC 1443 delivered 16 March 2017 per Cambridge C