HJK

Berry,

I do have a good lawyer who I think could tell you quickly if you have a case or not. I would prefer not to put his name in a public forum but if you could leave an email address I can pass on his contact details and other info.

Berry,

Whatever you do take proper legal advice, do not trust anything that has not been told to you by a Thai lawyer. Thai law seems to be very peculiar. With an unfair dismissal case the more senior your position the higher your rate of compensation may be. Contrary to a previous post on this thread there is no upper cap on compensation for damages. It is totally up to the judge. I have a friend who is a senior project manager for a firm and he is suing for several years salary in damages on his claim for unfair dismissal. I also have a lawsuit pending claiming several years in damages as compensation for unlawful dismissal.It seems like you are in a senior position and you would be well advised to take proper legal advise .

I read of a claim by a staff member in a company caught stealing who was sacked on the spot without compensation. That person ended up with 18 monbths pay in compensation and severance all because the staff member was not sacked correctly

Just remember the company has disrupted your life if they fire you, uprooted you from Malaysia to come here and work, you would have expected lengthy employment with the company. This is not in the same category as a language teacher who comes to Thailand looking for work, you would be in a much stronger position to win a damages claim on top of severance due. Just remember don't sign anything if they lay you off and do take proper legal advice and good luck

I am not familiar with "Grasung Langan", but if you are located in Bangkok, you can go to the legal assistance office outside the labor court building (near Hualomphong MRT/Railway stations - walking distance), and a free government attorney will help you prepare a court summons , to be delivered to your employer. Bring with you your personal ID documents, plus accurate documents identifying the employing company - and also any papers that you may have that document your salary rate (including bank account record, employment offer letters, personal income tax return PND.90).

If a whole group of employees will go at one time to file a joint claim, you need to make an appointment, and they will ask the group to appoint a couple of spokesmen to speak for the group in court.

The bad news - the court summons will be for a court date about eight weeks in the future.

The good news - The court is VERY employee-friendly, and any legitimate claim will likely be upheld.

In addition to normal notification and severance pay, you and fellow employees will probably be able to claim an additional one month's salary for"unfair dismissal" - that will be decided by the no=-cost legal assistance officer who helps prepare the summons.

Above is as much as I will outline at no charge. My company is presently helping employees of one 50-employee company to prosecute their claims against a subsidiary of a quite large Thai parent company. We can do the same for others - we have a Thai attorney and a labor court coordinator on staff who are both experienced with recent procedures.

If you do want professional help (for a fee), just Google my name and company - and you will find my e-mail address.

Good luck.

Steve Sykes

Indo-Siam Group

Only 1 months additional salary claim for unfair dismissal?? My lawyer tells me that for unfair/unlawful dismissal you can do a lot better than 1 months additional salary in damages and I have read cases of people getting 12 and 18 months salary in damages compensation on top of any severeance payments due. My lawyer is claiming at ;least a couple of years for unfair dismissal in my case and seems quite confident of winning a decent settlement. I know of another case coming up soon where the individual is claiming more than 3 years salary as damages for unfair dismissal.

In this particular case it sounds like the Thai company would struggle to pay this kind of penalty and they havent actually dismissed anyone yet.

I wonder why the above case would only merit 1 months additional damages whereas others may merit much larger damage payments.

as you may know, according to thai law, you are to recieve a certain amount of severance pay relative to time spent at a job here.

what i am curious about, is if anyone here has ever had employment terminated in thailand, and did they recieve it or not- and if not, why not? did you not know about it or they legalled or muscled out of it somehow.

i was working here with an MNC and didnt know that expats were also supposed to get severance pay as per thai labour law.My thai frd found it out from the social security office and later i fought out for it for 3mths .I also claimed money for 6mths from the social security office .I see them every end of the month and they transfer some money to my accounts before the 7th of every month

Nisha,

Did you get your severance paid? Did you have to go to court ? Are the social welfare payments for unemployment? I knew about the payments that Thais get from social welfare but if you are a Farang and don't have a job here then normally you would lose your visa and have to leave the country - wouldn't you? would make it hard to collect social security.

It was not my choice to not pay full tax, This was presented to me as part of a secondment contract by my employer. As far as I knew this was all legal and above board, perhaps I have a case to say the employer is responsible to pay any back taxes.

Be careful with that statement, even though it was part of your contract, you are responsible for the payment of tax, the company has no liability in this regard. Would the labour court inform the tax department?, highly unlikely but you have to be careful, as somebody has already pointed out "double contracts" in Thailand are technically illegal. Therefore you could sue for payment only based on your "on the book" salary in Thailand, ie for the purposes of the work permit your may be on the books in Thailand for somewhere around THB 50,000 to 60,000 and have been paying tax only on this amount, all other payments outside the country "dont exist" in the system

"My lawyer is lodging a claim for unfair dismissal and is looking for and expecting a damages settlement of at least 1 years salary and up to 3 years on top of severance due"

As regards your claim, think its a bit pie in the sky, Re damages and 3 years severance, you have only worked in this position for 2.5 years ?? the best you could hope for is 3 months severance based on your "Thai salary"

Yes it seems highly unlikely doesnt it, based on 2.5 years work getting paid 3 years damages , doesnt make any sense really. The lawyer puts it this way in the claim -The company fired me for no wrongdoing on my part a,paid no severance or damages to me whatsoever ,and they lured me away from my home country and I gave up other opportunities to work for them and I could have expected to work another 10 years with the company but we are only asking for 3 years in compensation, thats kind of how the claim is written.

In my heart I do believe that it is pie in the sky to expect any damages to be paid but the lawyer is so confident about it so i do have some hope. I think I would be happy just to get severance pay, anything else would definitely be a bonus.

As for the tax issue I guess that isnt worth worrying about until and if I win anything

cheers for your input.

sgtangel,

I know several people who were fired who received severance without asking. They also received an additional 1 or 2 bonus months pay but they had to sign a document promising not to bring a lawsuit against the company for Unjust dismissal. These were all local hires a mixture of locals and farangs. In my case I was hired out of singapore and then seconded to thailand . When i was laid off by the same company I got nothing even though my lawyer says I am entitled.

KiwiCoppy

thanks for your reply. It was not my choice to not pay full tax, This was presented to me as part of a secondment contract by my employer. As far as I knew this was all legal and above board, perhaps I have a case to say the employer is responsible to pay any back taxes. If i do manage to win this case I would seriously doubt that anyone in the labour court would inform the revenue department but perhaps my former employer might. The aim is to get any settlement paid off shore so hopefully it will be a blood from stone situation as far as the inland revenue goes.

Why do artists get so upset about people downloading their work for free? People who have plenty of money will still purchase from stores. people who download would probably never otherwise pay for that artists music or movie so there is no lost sale . In fact they get free publicity and it is more likely that person will pay for the concert ticket or go see the next movie by the artist because they have seen some of their work gratis.

OP

Did the project you were working on end (for that employer)?

If so, you might not be due anything.

HJK

I think anything over the 3 months is a pipedream.

I believe the courts here will give you your due, and no more. At least not 15 times what might be due.

Tell your lawyer that you'll take 100% of the first 3 months severance, and then his commission (%) will be deducted from the rest. His attitude to that might give you a clue to what could happen.

Good luck to both of you.

The project is still ongoing and my old employer is still fully involved and will be for another 2 years I would think. I am attending meetings with former co workers and will end up actually working on tasks with my old team mates doing exactly as if I still worked with the old company.

I think you are probably right that getting anything more than what I was due in severance may be a pipe dream but I will see it through anyway and see what eventuates. I read somewhere that if a judge does find a company guilty of wrongfully dismissing an employee typically they will order compensation of 1 or 2 years equivalent salary on top of severance pay due.The big If is proving unfair dismissal I guess but I have seen a few cases on the net of Thais who had won cases and been awarded significant damages and I really believe I was unfairly dismissed,there was no reason to let me go, I was busy I was well respected on the project, I was given no reason why I was one of the ones picked to be laid off and I believe that a few of the others who were laid off may well have been tempted to claim unfair dismissal if it wasnt for the fat severance plus bonus packages they received.

i am currently in a battle with my employer. He is not willing to pay due to bad economy.

After going to a lawyer he now claims that i walked out at the end of the month and never came back.

probably going to be a long case but i know my rights and i will get my payment.

Or at least your lawyer will get your payment..

I am also at the starting point of a dismissal dispute with my former company. I was made redundant from my job in Bangkok by a multi national company with branches worldwide (including Thailand and Singapore) I was recruited out of the Singapore office to work in Bangkok on a few projects and other colleagues were recruited from the Thailand office. Several people were made redundant recently and the employees hired by the Thailand office received proper and correct severance packages and those hired outside of thailand got paid based on the recruiting countries laws I ended up with nothing except a months notice and they let me go on the day I was returning to work after 3 weeks leave - It sure would have been nice to have those three weeks in cash.

Through my research on the net and in this forum and from what my lawyer tells me clearly I should have been paid a severance of 3 months as I worked here for 2 and a half years. My case is further complicated by my salary being split. I was paid a portion of my salary in Thai baht in Thailand in order to qualify for a work permit, the remainder was paid tax free offshore.

My lawyer is lodging a claim for unfair dismissal and is looking for and expecting a damages settlement of at least 1 years salary and up to 3 years on top of severance due.

I believe I have a strong case for unfair dismissal particularly as i was hired almost immediately by a partner company. I now work on the exact same project doing pretty much the same job but for another company and for a lot less money.

My big concern is taxes - for 2 and half years I paid very little tax in Thailand. It ended up at being probably less than 5 per cent over all when i should have been paying 30 per cent or thereabouts. If I win this case and receive a compensation payment I am worried that the Inland revenue dept will be waiting to take it all away from me.

has anyone heard of a split income case ? If so ,did the recipient get stung for back taxes? Are settlements taxable? If so how does the IRD find out you have just won a settlement?

Another point worth mentioning. Some employers will pay a minimum salary to expat employees which they declare to the tax dept. to avoid paying high amounts of tax and pay the remainder in cash to the employee.

If you are terminated you are only entitled to severance pay based on the min amount, despite the fact that your contracted salary may be twice the declared salary. Then if you try to take the employee to court, the revenue dept. will hit you for unpaid taxes if you win the case.

do you know this to be a fact? I am in a similar position and I am going to court but my lawyer has not given any warnings about possible back taxes.

I should also add I was recruited via my companies Singapore office to specifically work on projects based in Thailand even though there was a Thailand branch of this company. I never actually worked in Singapore. For my first year I (and others in the company)worked with no work permit even though we pestered our HR dept and were given lots of grief getting non immigrant b visa renewals by thai embassy staff. When they eventually provided work permits, approximately one third of my salary package was paid in Thai baht and taxed and the remainder paid offshore tax free. I worked for 18 months with a work permit paying tax with the Thailand branch of my company listed as my employer on the permit and on my tax documents.

I was made redundant based on Singapore law which only required one months notice to be given and no severance pay until employed for 3 years. I complained via email to the company that under Thai law I was entitled to severance and they then sent me an additional letter telling me to get Lost basically and they weren't going to pay me anything.

I took this all to a lawyer who now says I have a strong case for unjust dismissal and has promised the earth in damages. however he seems to be avoiding the questions I have put to him regarding tax. I will also say that this particular lawyer came highly recommended by a friend who had used him in the past.

I have since been re employed in Thailand albeit in a lower paid job but I would leave the country and the job if it meant I could avoid back taxes. I might also add that my new employer is a partner company of my old company and I am now working on the exact same project that I was made redundant from, doing the same job, more or less but for less money and working alongside my old workmates, my lawyer is super confident of winning an unjust dismissal case but that could just be salesman talk to obtain the non refundable retainer.

Any advice anyone? My biggest fear is winning a dismissal case only to have all the settlement disappear to back taxes which could end up being more than any compensation I might win. I doubt whether my lawyer cares as he will take a percentage of the gross settlement anyway so he gets his money but gets nothing if I withdraw my complaint (except for retainer I have already paid).

Another point worth mentioning. Some employers will pay a minimum salary to expat employees which they declare to the tax dept. to avoid paying high amounts of tax and pay the remainder in cash to the employee.

If you are terminated you are only entitled to severance pay based on the min amount, despite the fact that your contracted salary may be twice the declared salary. Then if you try to take the employee to court, the revenue dept. will hit you for unpaid taxes if you win the case.

do you know this to be a fact? I am in a similar position and I am going to court but my lawyer has not given any warnings about possible back taxes.