Employees' rights will now be better protected thanks to a series of provisions in the Employment Act 2000 to protect against unfair dismissal.

But the rights of the employer are also guarded and incompetent and negligent workers can still be fired.

Employees have virtually no rights during their probationary period, and employers can terminate a contract for any reason -- without notice.

But once that employee gets past probation, it becomes harder to summarily dismiss them. Procedures will now have to be followed with warning notices in some cases, The Act says that an employer may take disciplinary action such as suspending an employee or issuing a written warning, whenever it is "reasonable'' to do so.

According to the Act "reasonableness'' may be determined considering a long list of factors: the nature of the conduct in question, the duties of the employee, the terms of the contract of employment, any damage caused by the employee's conduct, the employee's length of service and previous conduct, the employee's circumstances, the penalty imposed by the employer, the procedure followed by the employer in imposing disciplinary action and the practice of the employer in similar situations.

The employer can still fire an employee without notice or in any circumstance if the employee is guilty of serious misconduct.

This allows for more lee-way for employers as it does not have to be "gross'' misconduct.

Serious misconduct is, in the act, when the employee's action is directly related to the employment relationship, or the misconduct has a detrimental effect on the employer's business, or the misconduct is so bad that it would be unreasonable to expect an employer to continue to hire them.

If the employee's conduct is not considered to be "serious misconduct'' then a written warning should be issued, and will stay in effect for six months.

If the employee repeats the misconduct, the employee can then be dismissed without notice or severance payment.

According to Kelvin Hastings-Smith of Appleby Spurling & Kempe, the employer should terminate employment as soon as possible after the employer becomes aware of the repeated misconduct. If he or she fails to do so, he may waive his right to terminate the employee's contract of employment.

If the employee repeats the misconduct after the six months of the warning expires, the employee cannot be fired, but must be warned once again.

When an employee has an "unsatisfactory performance'', they can only be fired by following new procedures.

A written warning must be presented to the employee together with instructions on how to improve performance. If the employee shows no improvement in the six months from the date of the written warning, the employer has the right to fire the worker without notice or severance pay.

An employee on a work permit whose work permit has expired will not be considered as "terminated'' for the purposes of the act, but it states that employment will cease immediately.