General Protections Dispute Involving Dismissal Claim (21 Days)

If you have been dismissed from your job, you may be eligible to make either:

• an Unfair Dismissal claim to the Fair Work Commission (FWC); or
• a General Protections Dispute Involving Dismissal (GPD-D) claim to the FWC .

You must choose to make either an unfair dismissal claim or a GPD-D claim (or another claim e.g. a discrimination complaint under the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 2010) because you can only make one claim at a time in relation to the termination of your employment.

Note: You have 21 days from the date your dismissal took effect to file your GPD-D claim (or Unfair Dismissal claim).

What are my rights?

Your employer must terminate your employment because or partly because of one or more of the following reasons:

• your race, colour, sex, sexual preference, gender identity, intersex status, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, breastfeeding, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin;
• you have taken a temporary absence from work due to illness or injury in accordance with the Act’s regulations;
• you have a workplace right;
• you have exercised or not exercised a workplace right;
• you propose to or propose not to exercise a workplace right;
• to prevent you from exercising a workplace right;
• trade union membership or non-membership; or
• you engaged in industrial activity.

You have 21 days to file your claim in the FWC from the date of the unlawful adverse action. The FWC may hold a conference to try and resolve the matter.

For more information about General Protections Dispute Involving Dismissal claims, we recommend you download the ‘General Protections Dispute Involving Dismissal’ Fact Sheet.

For further support

Call our Telephone Information Service on Melbourne Metro (03) 9662 1933 or Regional Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania on 1800 331 617.