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Employees cannot contract out of unfair dismissal protection
[ch 10: pages 267-268]Because of the unequal bargaining power between the parties and the risk of employees being forced to give up their rights, the law says that in general, employer and employee are not allowed to agree between themselves to exclude protection from unfair dismissal. For example, they are not allowed to agree in advance that particular events, if they happen, will bring the contract to an end automatically:
Mrs Igbo asked for extended holiday to visit her family in Nigeria. Her employer agreed, provided she accepted that her employment would end automatically if she failed to return by the agreed day. When she failed to return, the Court of Appeal refused to hold that the contract had terminated automatically, finding instead that there had been a dismissal. Any other conclusion would have meant that the parties’ arrangement got around the tribunal’s jurisdiction to decide whether a dismissal was fair or unfair.
Igbo v Johnson Matthey Chemicals Ltd [1986] IRLR 215