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If you're taking legal action against your employer, or if they're taking legal action against you, it's important to know your rights about whether you still get paid.
Being on suspension from a roles is very different from being fired. If you are fired you'll be paid all your entitlements such as bonuses and holidays etc, however, when you are suspended you need to know whether you are going to be paid during what could be an indefinite periods.
For a number of reasons, any employee may be suspended from work pending a disciplinary hearing, or as a form of sanction.
Enquiries and sanctions
Where you are suspended pending a disciplinary enquiry, the employer is in most cases obliged to continue to pay your salary. This is in effect to get to the bottom of an alleged transgression.
If suspended based on a form of a disciplinary sanction, the suspension will be without pay. However, your employer may only suspend you without pay if it is outlined and provided for by their formal set of disciplinary codes and procedures.
In general, in the ordinary course of employment, employees are first suspended pending a disciplinary enquiry. Not all alleged transgressions which are the subject of a disciplinary enquiry end with an employee's suspension.
Indeed, it is only in exceptional cases that an employee is suspended pending a disciplinary enquiry. And this is where:
- The employer has a reasonable concern that their business will be harmed by the employee's continued presence
- The employee's presence would affect working relationships
- The employee has access to confidential information
- The offence is of a serious nature
Reasonable periods of suspension
Even though suspension is very rare, your employer may choose to do so depending on a pending disciplinary enquiry. The investigation into your alleged transgressions must be finished within a reasonable period. This allows you to have the clear opportunity to be heard and make representations to the employer on why he should not be suspended.
If your employer suspends you without any valid reason and without following a fair procedure, you have the right to your unfair labour practice dispute to the Commission of Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). This can also apply if you are complaining that your employer is taking an unreasonably long time to deal with your dispute.
In the event that you are successful, the CCMA will declare the suspension unlawful, order the employer to lift the suspension and may also award you compensation.