# Unfair dismissal claims under section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967

> The 60-day filing window, conciliation at JPPM, the Industrial Court route since the 2020 amendment, and how backwages and compensation are actually calculated.

- Category: employment
- Language: en
- Status: published
- Updated: 2026-07-20
- Canonical: https://negaraku.md/en/employment/unfair-dismissal-malaysia

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Sixty days. That is the whole game, and it is where most Malaysian unfair dismissal claims die — not on the merits, but because the employee spent seven weeks negotiating with HR, another two waiting for a reply that never came, and filed on day sixty-three.

Section 20(1A) of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 says the Director General **shall not entertain** representations filed out of time. It is not a soft deadline that sympathy can stretch. Employers know this. Employees usually do not.

## When exactly does the 60 days start?

The section reads: representations must be filed within sixty days of the dismissal, with a proviso that where a workman is dismissed **with notice**, he may file at any time during the notice period but **not later than sixty days from the expiry** of that notice.

So there are two different start points, and getting them mixed up is costly:

| Situation | Deadline |
| --- | --- |
| Summary dismissal, no notice | 60 days from the date of dismissal |
| Dismissed with notice | Any time during the notice, and up to 60 days after the notice expires |
| Paid in lieu of notice | Treat as dismissal on the effective date — the proviso speaks of notice given, not indemnity paid |

The third row is the ambiguous one. Where an employer pays an indemnity under s.13(1) of the Employment Act 1955 rather than letting notice run, the safest assumption is that the contract terminated immediately and the clock started then. Do not rely on the proviso to buy extra weeks.

Constructive dismissal follows the same rule, with the added difficulty that the employee must first resign and claim the employer's conduct forced it — the sixty days then runs from that resignation.

## What has to be shown?

Section 20(1) lets a workman who considers himself dismissed **without just cause or excuse** ask for reinstatement, whether or not he belongs to a trade union. That phrase carries the whole burden of Malaysian dismissal law: there is no at-will employment here, and the employer must justify the dismissal on both **substance** (was there a real reason?) and **procedure** (was it arrived at fairly?).

The burden sits on the employer, not the employee. The employee proves dismissal; the employer proves cause.

## The route the claim takes

**1. File at JPPM.** The representation goes to the Director General for Industrial Relations — in practice, the Department of Industrial Relations (Jabatan Perhubungan Perusahaan Malaysia), at any of its state offices.

**2. Conciliation.** Section 20(2) requires the Director General to take such steps as he considers necessary or expedient so that an **expeditious settlement** is arrived at. This is a without-prejudice meeting, usually informal, often more than one session. The Act sets no time limit on this stage — none. Most claims end here, in a negotiated sum.

**3. Direct reference to the Industrial Court.** This is the part most published guides still get wrong. Under the pre-2021 law, the Director General notified the **Minister**, who decided whether to refer the case to the Industrial Court — a discretionary gate that was itself the subject of judicial review applications.

The Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2020 (Act A1615) **came into operation on 1 January 2021** and deleted that step. The current s.20(3) reads: where the Director General is satisfied that there is no likelihood of the representations being settled under subsection (2), the Director General **shall refer** the representations to the Court for an award. The word is "shall", the referrer is the Director General, and the Minister is out of the picture. If a guide still describes a ministerial referral, it predates 2021.

**4. Award.** Section 30(3) requires the Court to make its award without delay and, where practicable, within thirty days from the date of reference.

**5. Appeal.** Section 33C, also introduced by A1615, replaced the old judicial review route with a **statutory appeal to the High Court within fourteen days from receipt of the award**, following the Rules of Court 2012 procedure for appeals from a Sessions Court. Fourteen days is brutally short and is the deadline employers most often miss. Note also that the former ss.33A and 33B were deleted by A1615 — anyone citing s.33B for finality of awards is citing a repealed provision.

## The remedies formula

This is where the numbers live, and both of the key figures are officially published — not, as often claimed, mere judicial convention.

**Backwages.** The Second Schedule to the Act (which bites through s.30(6A)) provides:

- backwages **shall not exceed twenty-four months** from the date of dismissal, based on last-drawn salary, for a workman dismissed without just cause or excuse;
- for a **probationer**, backwages shall not exceed **twelve months**;
- where there are post-dismissal earnings, a percentage decided by the Court is **deducted**;
- relief **shall not include compensation for loss of future earnings**;
- relief takes into account **contributory misconduct**.

One qualification worth knowing: s.30(6A) carries a proviso that the subsection does not apply to a dismissal relating to ss.4, 5 or 7 of the Act — the union-victimisation provisions. Those caps do not bind in that narrow class of case.

**Compensation in lieu of reinstatement.** Reinstatement is the statutory remedy, but where the relationship has broken down the Court awards compensation instead. Industrial Court **Practice Note No. 3 of 2019** states it plainly: one month's salary for each year of **completed** service, and **no compensation for any uncompleted year**. The Practice Note gives worked examples — nine months' service yields nothing; four years and eight months yields four months' salary; seven years and eleven and a half months yields seven.

**The deduction point competitors miss.** Practice Note 3 of 2019 provides that mitigation — what the employee earned after dismissal — is deducted from **backwages only**, not from the compensation in lieu of reinstatement. An employee who found a new job quickly may see backwages heavily reduced while the compensation component stays intact.

## What a claim is actually worth

Take a confirmed employee on RM5,000 a month, six completed years of service, dismissed without just cause, who found new work after eight months. Maximum backwages of 24 months is RM120,000, reduced by a percentage of the eight months of post-dismissal earnings at the Court's discretion. Compensation in lieu at one month per completed year adds RM30,000, undiminished by mitigation.

That arithmetic is why employers settle at conciliation, and why the cost of skipping a domestic inquiry is not theoretical.

## Common mistakes

**Negotiating past day sixty.** Settlement talks do not stop the clock, and no provision allows an extension. File first, negotiate after.

**Believing the Minister still gates the referral.** Removed with effect from 1 January 2021.

**Assuming probationers cannot claim.** The Second Schedule expressly contemplates a probationer's award. Probation reduces the backwages cap; it does not remove the right.

**Filing a civil suit as well.** Section 20(4) provides that once an award has been made, it bars any action for damages in any court for wrongful dismissal. The two routes are not cumulative.

**Missing the 14-day appeal window.** Section 33C is a genuine trap — judicial review's longer timeline no longer applies.

**Treating the caps as the expected award.** Twenty-four months is a ceiling, not a norm. Contributory misconduct and post-dismissal earnings routinely bring awards well below it.

## What's next

If you are the employee: file the representation at the nearest JPPM office now and keep negotiating in parallel. If you are the employer: the defence is built before the dismissal, not after — see `domestic-inquiry-malaysia` for the procedural record the Court will look for, and `termination-of-employment-malaysia` for choosing the correct route in the first place.

## Sources

- Industrial Relations Act 1967 (Act 177), reprint as at 1 November 2021 — https://lom.agc.gov.my/ilims/upload/portal/akta/outputaktap/1690019_BI/010721_Act%20177_final.pdf (Attorney General's Chambers)
- Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2020 (Act A1615) — https://www.mp.gov.my/images/doc/legislation/ActA1615.pdf (Industrial Court of Malaysia)
- Practice Note No. 3 of 2019 — Guidelines Governing Awards in Dismissal Cases — https://www.mp.gov.my/images/doc/practicenotes/PN3_2019_Guidelines_Governing_Awards_in_Dismissal_Cases.pdf (Industrial Court of Malaysia)
- Jabatan Perhubungan Perusahaan Malaysia — official portal — https://jpp.mohr.gov.my/ (JPPM)
- Employment Act 1955 (Act 265) — https://jtksm.mohr.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-11/Akta%20Kerja%201955%20(Akta%20265)_0.pdf (JTKSM)

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