Posted by sylvia hammond on March 19, 2012 at 11:59 in Industrial Relations
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.In this week's Mail & Guardian Transnet Board Chairperson Mafika Mkwanazi is reported as saying that: "... the company was investigating changing its policy to prevent employees resigning if they were under investigation or implicated in any form of financial mismanagement." Question: can an employer refuse to accept a resignation?
Certainly in "the old days", it was practice to "accept" the resignation. However, subsequent court decisions have indicated that the employer does not have the power to "accept or reject" a resignation.
What the employer does have is the power to refuse to accept a withdrawal of a resignation. That is, once the resignation is given the employee has terminated the contract from their side - that is within their rights. If the employee changes their mind, there is no obligation on the employer to accept a withdrawal of notice.
But back to the point, even if the employer could refuse to accept a resignation, would we want that to happen in a parastatal or state department? Given the amount of money wasted while employees are on "gardening leave" or suspended pending further investigation or an enquiry, surely we would rather just let the employee leave?
The rationale for the refusal was that employees would find work in another government department, and we don't want persons potentially implicated in financial mismanagement moving to another department. Well, wouldn't the HR people responsible for recruitment conduct reference checks? Then surely, they would find out that the individual had resigned prior to a disciplinary enquiry? The applicant would then be asked to explain why they resigned prior to a disciplinary enquiry. Or am I missing the point? What do members think?
