Revisiting Disciplinary Proceedings in Employment Law: Are they still a Requirement for Valid Dismissal?

Author: Clyde Bonnici

For employers in Malta, handling disciplinary proceedings against an employee may feel like walking a tightrope. In what was held by the Maltese Court of Appeal to be a serious lacuna, Maltese employment law does not regulate the sort of procedural fairness that is required prior to dismissing an employee. This legislative silence has afforded the Industrial Tribunal carte blanche to independently regulate, through its decisions and the influential legal principles emerging therefrom, when and how disciplinary proceedings must be conducted before a dismissal can be considered fair.

The upshot of this free hand afforded to the Industrial Tribunal has been a situation where procedure prevails over merits. The Industrial Tribunal has held, on numerous occasions, that even where the employee is found to be guilty of the accusations made against him by his employer, failing to undertake, to the letter, a just and fair disciplinary procedure renders the dismissal unfair, and entitles the unruly employee to compensation. In this context, employers are justified to second guess their every move when disciplining an employee: one wrong step, and liability for unfair dismissal is likely to ensue.

One recent decision by the Industrial Tribunal, however, seems to have broken the trend. In Keon Vella vs Marineland Limited, the Tribunal was presented with a scenario that must have felt all too familiar to the Tribunal: an employee dismissed for disciplinary reasons without a disciplinary process being undertaken. Based on the Tribunal’s own teachings, the outcome ought to have been a predictable one, upholding the employee’s claims of unfairness. Nevertheless, the Tribunal’s decision, dated the 22^nd April 2026, was nothing short of surprising. The Tribunal did not consider the employer’s failure to lead to unfair dismissal. It is this departure from the jurisprudential norm, therefore, that makes this decision worth disseminating, also because of the telling considerations made therein regarding the employee’s right to information and the importance of workplace rules.

The Facts

Plaintiff was employed on a part-time basis at the marine park owned and operated by the defendant company. Whereas his full-time role was that of a director with a public company, in the marine park, he used to work as a diver, cleaning and conducting maintenance in the aquarium tanks of the marine animals. Throughout his tenure, he witnessed the park change ownership and management multiple times, the park having recently fallen under the purview of the defendant company. It was after this change in management that the relationship between the two broke down, leading to the employee’s summary dismissal. The employee alleged that such dismissal was unfair, the company failing to give him an opportunity to defend his position through a disciplinary procedure. On the other hand, the company argued it was fully within its rights to so dismiss the employee, considering his consistent insubordination and inobservance of workplace rules.

The Employee’s Right to Information

One reoccurring accusation in the employee’s argumentation was that the company’s governance was poor, symptomatic of a management that did not have the requisite technical expertise to manage a marine complex of the sort. The employee alleged that the company failed to provide him eight months’ worth of payslips, and it was only when he complained to a director of the company that these were given to him. He also lamented that he was left in the dark concerning the changes in the ownership and the management of the company.

After considering the evidence produced, the Tribunal deemed the employee’s allegations unfounded. The Tribunal recognised that employees are entitled to receive their payslips, but in this case, the employee was by no means denied said documents, these being made available for collection at the company’s offices. Insofar as the information surrounding the change in ownership, the Tribunal established that employees are entitled to be informed of such changes, but not of the motivations behind them. Employees also have a right to information concerning the general situation of the company and its future prospects. In this case, the company had indeed called a meeting with its employees, introducing the new management and its vision. The plaintiff failed to attend said meeting, citing a clash with his full-time responsibilities and saying he would only attend if he were to be paid for his time. The Tribunal considered this to be a serious mistake on the employee’s part, such approach not auguring well for his relationship with the new management.

Failure to Observe Work Regulations

What resulted amply clear to the Tribunal was that the employee was a consistent violator of the company’s internal rules and regulations. The plaintiff failed to observe the work roster prepared for him by the company, on occasion showing up for work when the complex was already closed. This caused co-ordination problems for the company, and also meant that occasionally, the plaintiff would perform cleaning operations on his own, without supervision, placing at risk his own safety as well as that of the animals. The plaintiff would take other arbitrary and unilateral decisions which caused headaches to the company, such as rebooting the animals’ life support system and moving animals from one tank to another, without authorisation and without being trained to do so.

The Tribunal observed that by failing to respect the legitimate and serious instructions of the company, the employee had exposed himself to being justly dismissed from his employment. The Tribunal held that the schedule of work and the regulations for the cleaning of the tanks were work conditions which the employer was entitled to determine unilaterally and in accordance with the needs of the operations, provided that such rules are brought to the due attention of the employees. It resulted from the evidence that such rules had been brought to the plaintiff’s attention time and time again, the company continually requesting his adherence to same. The regulations which the employee was being requested to follow had serious implications on health and safety at the workplace, and any resistance towards following same could never be justified. The plaintiff was therefore duty-bound to follow said rules, and by repeatedly and unilaterally disobeying them, he was exposing his employer to health and safety non-compliance risks which, as a diligent employee, he was meant to avoid.

Whether a Disciplinary Hearing was Needed

Finally, the Tribunal was required to provide its observations on the employee’s leading argument: that the company’s failure to undertake a disciplinary procedure in his respect rendered the dismissal unfair. The Tribunal prefaced its considerations by saying that dismissal is a very serious decision, and this due to the significant repercussions it has on the life of the employee and his family. In circumstances where the employer terminates without a disciplinary procedure, the Tribunal acts with increased caution, and in situations different from those of the present case, such failure would have seriously weakened the employer’s case.

The question which this begs, therefore, was the following: what differentiated this set of circumstances from the rest, such that they merited different treatment? The Tribunal observed that the company’s personnel had spoken to the employee on numerous occasions concerning his failure to follow company rules. Nevertheless, the employee remained steadfast in his indiscretions, the Tribunal deducing, from his consistent insubordination, that he had no intention of adapting to the company’s rules and needs. Said indiscretions were particularly serious given that the rules the plaintiff was failing to respect were meant to protect health and safety at work. In view of the employee’s intransigence, the Tribunal held that no amount of warnings, and no disciplinary procedure, would have improved the situation. Thus, the employer acted reasonably in dismissing the employee without a disciplinary procedure, having lost all faith in the employee.

Conclusion

The Industrial Tribunal’s decision in Keon Vella vs Marineland Limited is noteworthy due to a number of novel pronouncements made by the Tribunal therein. The Tribunal enunciated the principle that employees are entitled to information about changes in the ownership of their employer company, but are not entitled to know the motivation behind those changes. The Tribunal also observed that workplace regulations, especially those that intend to safeguard health and safety, are not only a prerogative of the employer, but also its obligation, making the employee’s duty to observe them indisputable. More importantly, this decision added another twist in the tale of how in Maltese employment law, disciplinary procedures (or lack thereof) impinge on the validity of a dismissal. The position established in an overwhelming number of Tribunal decisions has been that a dismissal cannot be just without due process being followed. On the other hand, in Keon Vella vs Marineland Limited, the prevailing principle was that a disciplinary process is not needed where that procedure would have had no bearing on the situation between the employer and the employee. Thus, the employer in this case was justified in dismissing the employee without a disciplinary hearing, in circumstances where both the employee’s insubordination, and his insistence to continue disobeying workplace rules, were amply clear to all parties.