Sacked on the Spot and Paid Nothing: What Section 9 Says, Who Has to Prove It, and Where It Goes Next

The question many people ask: he called it summary dismissal and paid nothing — can he do that?

That question is not one issue among several. It is the gate to every other one. Section 8(b) of the Employment Ordinance (Cap. 57) expressly preserves the section 9 right, which means the notice periods in section 6 and the payment-in-lieu formula in section 7 are not in issue at all until section 9 is decided. While the employer's characterisation stands, there is no notice and no payment in lieu. If it falls, sections 6 and 7 come back into play, and section 8A fixes the sum the terminating party must pay: an amount equal to what termination in accordance with section 7 would have required. ⚠ That sentence needs a qualification in the same breath: notice and payment in lieu are what sections 6 and 7 would have required. Where section 6 required none — most commonly during the first month of an employment expressly agreed to be on probation, under sections 6(3)(a) and 6(3A)(a) — the failure of the section 9 characterisation does not conjure them. Section 4 below. The decision section 9 puts in front of a dismissed employee is not whether to be angry. It is whether to challenge the characterisation.

The thirty-second version

• Where the rule is, and which word it uses. Cap. 57, section 9. The operative word in section 9(1) is may — the section confers a right, not an automatic gate the employer walks through by ticking a list.
• The four grounds in section 9(1)(a) are not the whole of section 9. Section 9(1)(b) is an open residual limb that imports the common-law grounds on which a contract may be terminated without notice. The Labour Department's own 78-page guide never prints it.
• Who has to prove it? The Ordinance contains no general provision allocating that burden. It allocates one three times only, each for a defined class — pregnant employees, employees dismissed on a paid sickness day, and Part VI A. For an ordinary summary dismissal: the Judiciary tells Labour Tribunal litigants the defendant bears it; the Law Reform Commission wrote the same in 2010; three law firms state it and none of the three mentions the 2025 judgment discussed in section 3, two of them writing in 2016 and 2021, before it existed; and in 2025 a deputy judge of the Court of First Instance put it on the employer and found it undischarged — while writing, in the paragraph immediately before, that he did not find the case easy to decide.
• Two doors — but no statutory order between them. Labour Department conciliation, and the Labour Tribunal. ⚠ What the law requires is a certificate, not that you conciliate first: Cap. 25 section 15(1) says the tribunal shall not hear a claim until a conciliation certificate is filed — and limb (a) of that same subsection contemplates a party refusing to take part, with the certificate issuing anyway. A separate document does something else: where conciliation produces a written settlement and that settlement is filed under section 15(8), section 15(9) provides that it is treated for all purposes as if it were an award of the tribunal. That is the settlement, not the certificate.
• And a third door you have probably not been told about. Cap. 25 sections 10(1) and 10(2) let the Tribunal decline jurisdiction at any stage, for any reason, and transfer the claim to the Court of First Instance, the District Court or the Small Claims Tribunal. The 2025 judgment in section 3 left the Labour Tribunal for the High Court in exactly that way.

Scope: below are the provisions quoted, what the judgments quoted actually decided, and what the official documents actually say. Whether a dismissal was lawful, whether to bring a claim, whether to accept an offer, and what the chances are all depend on the whole of the facts.

1. What section 9 says: may, not must — and paragraph (b) is an open door

Section 9 is not a checklist an employer completes to avoid paying. It confers a right, and the grounds it lists are not the whole of it.

The opening words of section 9(1):

The Chinese authentic text reads 「如有以下情況，僱主可無須給予通知或代通知金而終止僱傭合約 ——」

Then paragraph (a) — the four grounds everyone has heard of:

*Note where the word or falls, after (iv)* — the section lists four things and then joins paragraph (b) to them with it. Paragraph (b) follows:

So paragraph (b) is not a fifth ground. It is a residual limb that brings inside the section the common-law grounds on which a contract may be terminated without notice — the grounds, not every other question the common law governs. *(The same English words appear twice in Cap. 57: the second occurrence is section 10(c), the employee's mirror right — section 8(b) preserves the right of a party, not of the employer alone.)*

Section 9(2) adds one express limit:

This site's reading (sections 9(1), 9(1)(a), 9(1)(b) and 9(2) read together): the four grounds in paragraph (a) are not an exhaustive list. Across the whole of section 9, nothing anywhere in it says the grounds are limited to those listed — and paragraph (b) expressly brings in the common-law grounds on which a contract may be ended without notice.

Why has this section not moved in nearly sixty years?

Because paragraph (b) means it does not have to. Section 9 has been amended by exactly one Ordinance since 1968 — 51 of 2000, which added the strike provision above and left paragraphs (a) and (b) untouched. Compare the section immediately beside it: section 6, on notice, has been amended by eight separate Ordinances since 1970 (5 of 1970, 44 of 1971, 57 of 1983, 48 of 1984, 55 of 1987, 53 of 1990, 103 of 1995, 7 of 2001).

The 1968 Objects and Reasons to the Employment Bill record that what is now section 9 set out in detail a right to dismiss for cause that already existed in the proviso to section 5 of the predecessor Ordinance — so the section was a codification of an existing common-law right from its first day. The one legislative attempt to change the test, the Unfair Dismissal Bill introduced by Mr LEUNG Yiu-chung, was negatived at Second Reading on 26 June 1997 by 24 votes to 32.

And the version you are most likely to read is a shorter section 9

The Labour Department's Concise Guide to the Employment Ordinance (December 2025 edition; 78 pages English, 64 Chinese) gives four grounds for summary dismissal. From end to end, the guide never mentions the common law and never mentions section 9. The guide also shortens the misconduct ground by dropping the statutory qualifier. Separately, at least one published practitioner restatement of paragraph (b) prints with notice where the Ordinance reads without notice.

Why this matters. Not because anyone was careless. Because a reader who reads a summary of section 9 is reading a shorter section than the one that governs them — and the half that goes missing is the half that has kept the section unamended for fifty-eight years.

2. Who has to produce the evidence? The Ordinance gives no general answer — but it answers three times

Cap. 57 contains no general provision allocating the burden of proving a summary dismissal, and the legislature has expressly allocated one three times, each time for a defined class. The contrast is half the answer.

How wide the silence is, and what it cannot answer

No general provision of Cap. 57 allocates the burden of proving a summary dismissal. ⚠ That is a fact about the statute and nothing more: Cap. 57 is enacted law, and the answer to this question lives in the common law that section 9(1)(b) brings in — so its absence from the Ordinance does not mean Hong Kong law has no answer.

The one general onus the Ordinance does allocate is on the employer — and it is about something else

The Chinese authentic text reads 「(2)在僱傭合約是否連續性合約的爭議中，僱主須承擔證明該合約並非連續性合約的舉證責任。」

That is about whether the contract was continuous, not about summary dismissal. And in the same 1968 Objects and Reasons, the draftsman allocated an onus expressly, by name, for the clause that is now section 3(2) — on the employer — and allocated none for the summary-dismissal clause. The record shows one allocation made by name, and none made next to it.

The three express allocations, each confined to a class

The first two: pregnant employees (section 15(1B)) and employees dismissed on a paid sickness day (section 33(4BAA)), both added by 7 of 2001.

Then a calibration almost nobody states correctly. Section 15(1C):

Only limb (b) is switched off. So in civil proceedings — the Labour Tribunal included — the employer loses the reasonable-belief escape route, while limb (a), "unless the contrary is proved", survives and keeps operating against the employer there. Section 33(4BAB) does exactly the same for the sickness-day presumption. Two common shorthands — that the reverse burden does not apply in the Tribunal, and that the presumption disappears there — are both wrong.

The third: Part VI A (Employment Protection). And here the gateway has to be stated first, because it is itself a filter. Section 32A(1)(a):

The presumption that follows operates only "for the purposes of subsection (1)(a)" — so an employee with less than 24 months' continuous service does not reach it at all. Section 32A(2):

read with the opening words of section 32K:

And this is now the Court of Final Appeal's own language, not a commentator's. In FACV 2/2005 (Court of Final Appeal, judgment 4 November 2005, on appeal from CACV 253/2002; Bokhary PJ gave the judgment):

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The scope is the whole point: this is the Part VI A allocation, not the section 9 one. Part VI A is a separate route with its own gateway and its own time limits — see unreasonable vs unlawful dismissal .

This site's reading (sections 3, 6–9, 15, 32A and 32K read together): the legislature knows how to put an employer to proof about section 9. It has done so three times, each time for a named class, and it has calibrated which limb survives in which forum. For everyone else the Ordinance is silent — and what fills that silence is the common law that paragraph (b) has already imported.

So what does support it for an ordinary summary dismissal?

Item by item:

• The Judiciary. Its general guidelines for preparation for trial in the Labour Tribunal — three pages, published in both languages — tell litigants that in most cases the claimant bears the burden of proof, that in cases of summary dismissal the defendant bears it, and that a party who fails to adduce sufficient evidence at trial to discharge it will most likely fail. Both sentences have to be read: the same claimant will usually also be claiming wages, holiday pay and annual leave pay, and on that document the burden on those is theirs.
• The Law Reform Commission. In a footnote to a February 2010 report, the LRC wrote that where an employer terminates a contract summarily the onus is on the employer to prove that the dismissal was made according to one of the grounds set out in section 9. And it qualified itself in the very next paragraph: given the wide variety of circumstances that can arise, there is no simple answer to whether a summary dismissal is justified unless the full facts and circumstances of the case are examined.
• Practitioners — counting independence rather than volume. Three firms state the burden, and none of the three cites a Hong Kong authority for it: one cites an English contract-law textbook and a UK employment-appeal decision, another says only that case law suggests it and names no case. They are independent assertions rather than independent authority. The 2016 piece also says the decided cases are not often held for the employer — one firm's view, not a statistic.
• A 2025 Hong Kong judgment. Section 3 below.

This site's reading (the four items above read with sections 7 to 9): that the burden falls on the employer is consistently stated by the Judiciary, by the Law Reform Commission, by independent practitioners and by one first-instance judgment applying it. It is not stated by section 9 of the Ordinance, and the judgment discussed here is a decision at first instance, given by a deputy judge.

3. What a court actually did: one judgment, and the judge said it was not an easy call

A Hong Kong Court of First Instance judgment put the burden on the employer and found it undischarged — and the paragraph immediately before that finding records that the judge did not find it easy. Both sentences have to be read; reading one of them alone gets it wrong.

The case: [2025] HKCFI 2484, HCA 1135/2019, Court of First Instance, judgment 18 June 2025, after six hearing days (19–21, 24, 25 and 28 February 2025). The judgment was given by a deputy judge of the Court of First Instance — which matters wherever weight of authority is the point.

The judge's own words, at paragraphs 98 and 99:

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The nine principles you will read everywhere are the judge quoting a textbook

This is worth taking slowly, because the nine points circulate very widely as the court's own. The framing sentence is at paragraph 94:

Note the last two words. The judge neither adopts the summary nor says it is complete. And the end of the first of the nine points is the sentence most often quoted:

In the judgment, each of the nine points carries the textbook's own paragraph references (running from 6.105 to 6.129), and the widely circulated version carries none of them. So: what circulates as the court's summary of principle is a judge reciting a 2016 practitioner textbook. What is the court's own is paragraph 99 — and paragraph 99 is a finding about a party, not a general rule.

A heavy burden of proof is not in the judgment

The judgment nowhere describes the burden as heavy. The word burden appears only in the judge's own operative sentence at paragraph 99; onus appears only in the textbook recital.

What the judge says about the standard in his own voice is at paragraph 100(4):

This site's reading (paragraphs 94(3) and 100(4) read together): not a heavier burden — the ordinary civil one, with evidence proportionate to the seriousness of what is alleged. The phrase balance of probabilities appears three times in the judgment: once inside the textbook recital and twice where the judge applies it to his own findings of fact. He never uses the phrase in his own voice about the summary-dismissal standard. And "heavy" appears in neither place.

The most counter-intuitive finding: the employer did ask, repeatedly, and still lost

The judgment records that the employer put the allegation to the employee several times:

and the Termination Letter itself relied on the failure to explain as a ground under section 9(1)(a)(i). The judge accepted the employee's explanation was incomplete and still held it insufficient:

So what did tell against the employer? This should not be guessed at, because the judge set out his own list. Paragraph 100 opens:

Every one of the six that follow is a fact about the workplace, and none is about the conduct of the litigation: (1) the judge found as a fact that the employee incurred genuine family expenses every month and could have submitted invoices for them under the contract, so he had nothing to gain; (2) he found that the conversation with a manager acting with the employer's apparent authority did happen, and at least gave the employee reasonable cause to believe the approach was acceptable; (3) the invoices were checked by the employer's own staff, including Chinese-speaking staff, and paid; (4) the standard of proof for fraud is commensurate with the seriousness of the allegation, and the judge was not persuaded to that standard that the employee acted dishonestly; (5) viewed objectively and against a more usual fact-set the use of the invoices was highly irregular, called for serious explanation and could justify summary dismissal in an appropriate case; and (6) on these unusual facts the most likely factual scenario was one without dishonest intent.

The litigation-conduct points are in the judgment too — but they are not on that list. The allegation that the invoices were fabricated

— that is, it was never put in cross-examination and was supported by no forensic or hotel evidence; the criminal characterisation was raised only in closing submissions (paragraph 106); and a witness statement was filed for a key witness who did not attend to give evidence.

This site's reading: the way the employer ran the case did it no good — but the six reasons the judge himself called central are six findings about how the workplace was run. A reading on which the employer lost the litigation rather than the argument is not supported by the judgment's own list.

Neither side may over-read it, and that limit is in the judgment itself

Paragraph 104:

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Both sentences have to be quoted. The first is a hypothetical; the second is the judge declining, in the same paragraph, to apply it to this case.

So the judgment forbids reading it as predictable in either direction. And one further bound: the judgment cites no Hong Kong authority on the test. It cites four decisions in all: three of them Hong Kong reported — a 2015 Court of Final Appeal decision, cited on assumption of responsibility; a 2022 Court of Final Appeal decision, cited on what makes an instrument false under the Crimes Ordinance; and the 2020 interlocutory decision in this same action, in a footnote — and one English decision from 1967, which is the only one of the four cited on the summary-dismissal test at all. None of the four is cited for where the burden lies.

And the court accepted the 1967 proposition — which runs against the employee, and has to be said. Paragraph 105:

The proposition is that conduct short of dishonesty may be sufficient to justify summary dismissal where it is of a grave and weighty character undermining the confidence that should exist between employer and employee. It was advanced by the party that lost, and the judge accepted it.

What was awarded — and why one case's figure is not a benchmark

The round figure that circulates is not the court's. The judgment states no total and applies no exchange rate: it enters judgment by reference to its own itemised heads at paragraph 119, one of which — service fees under a Service Agreement — was expressly not awarded. The counterclaim was dismissed; interest and costs were ordered nisi.

More importantly, the measure of loss was not a notice period. Paragraph 12:

So the loss was measured over the balance of the unexpired fixed term, not over a notice period, because the contract could not be ended early except for good cause. How far that measure was actually applied is a separate question the judgment answers separately: the one head claimed over exactly the unexpired term — service fees under the Service Agreement from 1 September 2018 to 31 May 2020 — was the head expressly not awarded, and one head that was awarded runs from 1 January 2018, eight months before the dismissal. Where section 6 would have required notice, the sum section 8A(1) fixes is the amount termination in accordance with section 7 would have required — the notice-period figure (section 4 below). That case's figures turn on its own contract and facts and are not a benchmark for anyone else's.

4. If it was not lawfully summary, what you were short-paid

*Notice and payment in lieu are not a separate argument. They are what begins once section 9 is decided. Section 8 — headed Saving of rights — says so, and the lead-in has to be read with the limb, because paragraph (b) alone states the opposite of what the section does:*

The Chinese authentic text reads 「第6或7條的任何規定，不得用於 ——(a)阻止僱傭合約的任何一方，在因第6(2)、(3)或(3A)條的規定須給予通知時，放棄獲給予通知或代通知金的權利；(b)影響僱傭合約的任何一方根據第9、10或11(2)條不給予通知或代通知金而終止合約的權利。」

So nothing in sections 6 and 7 cuts down section 9; section 9 is saved from them. Which means that while the employer's characterisation stands, neither calculation below is reached at all.

*And there is a provision that says what is payable once the characterisation fails — Cap. 57 s. 8A, headed Damages for wrongful termination of contract:*

The Chinese authentic text reads 「(1)在不損害第9、10或11(2)條的規定下，凡僱傭合約並非按照第6或7條終止者，終止合約的一方須付給對方一筆款項，款額相等於假若該合約是按照第7條終止則本須支付的工資額。」

*Read the opening words: "Without prejudice to section 9". s. 8A does not decide whether the dismissal was lawfully summary — s. 9 does. What it does is state the consequence when the contract was ended otherwise than under s. 6 or s. 7: a sum equal to what s. 7 would have required. s. 8A(3) also fixes how the average is computed where no notice was given at all — by reference to the date of termination rather than a date of notice that does not exist. This article states the provision and does not calculate any reader's entitlement.*

Even a summary dismissal that stands does not mean nothing is payable — and the Ordinance sets a seven-day deadline

The Ordinance has no rule that an employee is "paid nothing". A section 9 characterisation that stands removes notice and payment in lieu. It does not remove wages already earned, and it does not remove other sums due to the employee.

*The provision is Cap. 57 section 25, headed Payment on termination:*

Section 25(2) says which sums subsection (1) is about:

Taken limb by limb: (a) is what the employee earned for work done from the expiry of the last wage period up to termination — the final unpaid pay run; (b) is the sum payable under sections 7, 15(2) and 33(4BA) — that is the payment-in-lieu limb, and it is the one that disappears while the section 9 characterisation stands; (ba) is any long service payment due; and (c) is any other sum due to the employee in respect of his contract of employment. Limbs (a), (ba) and (c) are a different question from whether section 9 holds.

Note the scope: section 25(2) is about sums that are due. Whether a particular reader is entitled to an end-of-year payment, pro-rata annual leave pay, a severance payment or a long service payment turns on the eligibility conditions in that contract and in the Ordinance. They have to be assessed case by case. (Severance and long service payment are covered in the two guides linked above.)

As for when: section 25(1) requires payment "as soon as is practicable and in any case not later than 7 days after the day of termination". Two further provisions hang off that seven-day rule:

• Section 25A(1) — interest on late payment:

Note its scope: it reaches wages and the sum referred to in section 25(2)(a), not every limb of section 25(2).

• Section 63C — the offence:

Notice: section 6(2) — and section 6(2) is not the whole of section 6

Section 6(1) says in its own opening words that subsection (2) is not the whole of it:

The one that most affects a reader, and that summaries most often drop, is probation. Section 6(3) — where the contract makes no provision for notice:

Section 6(3A) — where it does — has the same structure:

These are exceptions to section 6(2), not additions to it: where the employment is expressly agreed to be on probation, either party may terminate during the first month with no notice and no payment in lieu; only after the first month do the 7 days (or the agreed period, not less than 7 days) arrive. A person dismissed in the first month of a probationary contract who reads only section 6(2)(a) would conclude they were short-paid a month. On these subsections the Ordinance gives them nothing.

Two further subsections shorten the notice period itself: section 6(2A) provides that annual leave to which an employee is entitled under section 41AA is not included in the length of notice required under subsection (2), and section 6(2B) does the same for maternity leave under section 12.

Payment in lieu: section 7(1A) — and the three subsections that govern the same calculation

But section 7(1A) is not the whole of the arithmetic. Three more subsections of the same section govern how the average is taken.

Section 7(1B) — the periods, and the wages paid for them, that come out:

Section 7(1D) — the substitute basis where subsection (1A) cannot practicably be used:

Section 7(4) — when overtime pay counts as wages, and it overrides the rest of the Ordinance in terms:

The two authentic texts really are structured differently, and it is worth saying so: the English puts the operative words — "either party to a contract of employment may at any time terminate the contract without notice by agreeing to pay to the other party" — in the lead-in, while the Chinese repeats them inside paragraphs (a) and (b). The English quoted here is from the English text and the Chinese quoted in the Chinese section is from the Chinese text. Neither is a translation of the other.

Working the provisions

This is a reading of the formula, not anyone's entitlement.

• Ask first whether it is probation. Where the employment is expressly agreed to be on probation, either party may terminate at any time during the first month with no notice and no payment in lieu (sections 6(3)(a) and 6(3A)(a)) — so that case never reaches the steps below. After the first month, it does.
• Identify the contract. Deemed monthly-renewable with no agreed notice period → not less than 1 month. Deemed monthly-renewable with an agreed period → the agreed period, but not less than 7 days. Any other case → the agreed period, but not less than 7 days for a continuous contract (section 6(2)). Annual leave (section 6(2A)) and maternity leave (section 6(2B)) are not included in that period.
• Identify the multiplier. Notice expressed in months → the number of months required × the monthly average of wages. Notice expressed in days or weeks → the number of days in the period for which wages would normally be payable × the daily average (section 7(1A)).
• Identify the averaging window, and what comes out of it. The 12 months immediately before the date of notification, or, if the employee was employed for a shorter period than that, the shorter period (section 7(1A)(a)(i)–(ii) and (b)(i)–(ii)). Section 7(1B) then takes out maternity leave, paternity leave, rest days, sickness days, holidays, annual leave, leave taken with the employer's agreement, normal working days on which the employer provided no work, and absence through temporary incapacity compensable under Cap. 282 section 10 — together with any wages paid for those periods. If subsection (1A) cannot practicably be used at all, section 7(1D) allows the amount to be calculated by reference to a person employed at the same work by the same employer, or failing that in the same trade or occupation and at the same work in the same district.
• Ask whether overtime counts. Section 7(4) applies notwithstanding any other provision of the Ordinance: overtime pay of a constant character, or overtime pay whose monthly average over the relevant period is equal to or more than 20% of the monthly average wages, is included in wages; otherwise overtime pay is deemed not to be included.
• Identify the date of notification. The provision defines it itself: the date on which the party terminating the contract gives notice of the termination to the other party.

Note the opening qualifier of section 7(1A): "Subject to sections 15 and 33" — the pregnancy and sickness-day provisions run their own course, as section 2 above sets out.

Severance and long service payment: why you may be conflating them

Readers often treat payment in lieu of notice (代通知金), severance payment (遣散費) and long service payment (長期服務金) as one pot of money. The three sets of entitlements have different triggers, different eligibility and different arithmetic — see severance and long service payment and calculating them after the abolition of MPF offsetting .

If the employer has gone under

The proportion first: of the 12,940 claims the Labour Relations Division handled in 2024, cessation of business and insolvency accounted for 172 — 1.3%.

What the Fund is. Cap. 380 section 16(1) confers no right to be paid. It provides that where it appears to the Commissioner that an employer has failed to pay, and either paragraph (a) or paragraph (b) is satisfied — (b) is the company case, where a winding-up petition has been presented; (a) is the non-company case, and paragraph (a) has two sub-limbs, taken below, then

*So it is a discretion and what it pays is an ex gratia payment; and the general rule is that there must be a petition. But the petition is not an exceptionless precondition — the Ordinance opens two doors past it, and neither is theoretical.*

The first is inside paragraph (a) itself. Paragraph (a) has two sub-limbs, and the second reads:

So where a bankruptcy petition could not be presented only because of the restriction in section 6(2)(a) of the Bankruptcy Ordinance (Cap. 6), the Commissioner may still pay — and section 16(1A) requires him to give notice of the payment, and of his reasons for it, in the Gazette.

*The second is section 18, headed Additional power of Commissioner:*

Three conditions have to hold together: fewer than 20 employees; sufficient evidence to support the presentation of a petition; and that presenting one would be unreasonable or uneconomic. *Read the opening words subject to subsection (2) of that section: a payment under section 18 is still a payment under section 16, so every ceiling in section 16(2), the statutory declaration in section 16(2)(a) and the six-month deadline set out immediately below apply to it unchanged. Section 18 removes the petition requirement and nothing else.*

The ceiling and the deadline are both in section 16(2)(e). The lead-in to subsection (2) is "The Commissioner shall not make any payment under subsection (1)—", and paragraph (e) reads in full:

Subparagraph (ii) is a hard deadline: the Fund will not pay wages in lieu of notice that became due more than 6 months before the date of application (the subsection (2A) exception reaches only contracts terminated before the 1989 amending Ordinance commenced, so it does nothing for a reader today). This is a deadline for applying to the Fund, not a deadline for claiming against the employer — a different clock, in section 6 below.

And both limbs of the ceiling can be moved. Cap. 380 s.16(3) provides that the Legislative Council may by resolution amend the period specified in subsection (2)(e)(i)(A) or the amount specified in subsection (2)(e)(i)(B) — so what is movable is not only the $45,000 but the one month as well. For most readers the binding limit is the month rather than the dollar figure; but each is a level set by a power, not a fixed quantity.

$22,500 is a figure readers remember correctly, and the article's job is to say which ceiling it belongs to. There are two:

• The severance-payment monthly-wage ceiling in Cap. 57 s.31G, which still reads $22,500 on the 14 May 2026 consolidation of Cap. 57 — and which the Legislative Council may amend by resolution published in the Gazette under Cap. 57 s.67A: "The Legislative Council may, by resolution published in the Gazette, amend the references to $22,500 in— (a)sections 31G and 31V (including those sections as modified by Schedule 11);(b)this section; and(c)sections 7 and 8 of Schedule 2 to the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Ordinance (Cap. 380),by substituting a different amount specified in the resolution."
• The same figure has also been published as the Fund's notice-pay ceiling. Table 6 of the Director of Audit's Report No. 77, Chapter 6 (November 2021), setting out the ceilings of the Fund's payment items as at 30 June 2021, gives the wages-in-lieu-of-notice line as February 1996, 22,500. Cap. 380 (version in force 1 May 2025) reads $45,000.
• The Fund's notice-pay ceiling rose from $22,500 to $45,000 with effect from 17 June 2022. The Government's release of 16 June 2022 records that the Legislative Council passed the resolution that day, that the adjustment would take effect on gazettal the next day, and that it applies where the liability for payment arose on or after that date. The current Fund ceiling is therefore the lesser of one month's wages and $45,000; the monthly-wage input cap in Cap. 57's severance formula remains a different $22,500.

5. Where this gets decided: the Labour Department, the Labour Tribunal — and a door you have not been told about

Two doors — and no statutory order between them. And a third, which is an exit rather than an entrance. ⚠ There is no statutory sequence between the first two: what the law requires is the section 15(1) certificate, and limb (a) of that subsection contemplates a party refusing to take part in conciliation, with the certificate issuing anyway.

The names first, because the names are themselves a problem

The first door is the Labour Department (labour disputes go to its Labour Relations Division). The second is the Labour Tribunal — in Chinese 勞資審裁處, and the last character is 處, not 署. Note the spelling:

• Online, people sometimes call it 勞資審裁署.

And what has happened to people usually has a rough word and no legal one: they say 炒 (sacked), rarely the statutory 即時解僱.

What is not optional is the certificate, not the conciliation

Cap. 25 section 15(1):

Look at limb (a). The provision itself contemplates a party refusing to take part in conciliation, and the certificate issues anyway. So a party may decline to conciliate; nobody can skip the certificate.

The certificate has a deadline of its own, in the next subsection. Section 15(2):

An arithmetic that looks wrong, and a provision that should not be used to explain it. In 2024 the Labour Department handled 13,029 labour disputes and claims and settled 77.4% through conciliation, leaving roughly 2,945 unsettled — while in the same calendar year the Labour Tribunal received 4,879 claims. The two counts use different units — the Department counts a dispute involving more than 20 employees as one matter, the Tribunal counts claims — so they can be neither subtracted nor divided. That is the explanation of the gap, and it is sufficient. (Note also that the 12,940 used in the paragraphs below is a different population: that series counts claims only, each involving 20 or fewer employees, while 13,029 counts disputes and claims together. The two are not interchangeable.)

What is signed at conciliation has the force of an award

Section 15(9):

That is why whether to sign is a decision to take seriously. The Ordinance treats a filed settlement as an award; take advice before accepting any particular offer.

What you exchange by going to the Tribunal

Three unrelated instruments, one result — but the first has to be read with the subsection above it.

Cap. 25 section 23 is headed Right of audience. Section 23(1) lists who has one:

Section 23(2) is the subsection that restricts barristers and solicitors:

Legal Aid Ordinance (Cap. 91), Schedule 2, Part 2, item 10:

Read together, the accurate proposition is: no barrister or solicitor appears for either side before the tribunal — but that is not the same as no representation. Limb (e) allows an office bearer of a registered trade union or of an employers' association to appear as a party's representative, on the party's written authorisation and with the tribunal's leave; limb (d) allows a company or partnership that is a party to send an officer, servant or partner — so a corporate former employer can put someone in the room. Both limbs carry conditions: (e) needs a union, a written authorisation and leave. Not every reader has a union to call on. But the route is in the Ordinance, so the absence of a lawyer is not the absence of a representative.

And the Government's Procedural Advice Scheme for unrepresented litigants states its own scope as covering civil procedural matters in the named courts but not including civil proceedings in other tribunals — so it would not take a Labour Tribunal case even if you found it.

This site's reading (Cap. 25 s.23(2), Cap. 91 Sch. 2 Pt 2 item 10 and the Procedural Advice Scheme's own scope read together): for proceedings in the Labour Tribunal, a claimant has no legal aid, no barrister or solicitor appearing for them at the hearing, and no Procedural Advice Scheme; the one substitute the Ordinance leaves open is section 23(1)(e), which requires a union, a written authorisation and the tribunal's leave.

⚠ That sentence has to be read with its own scope. Item 10 says "In the Labour Tribunal, proceedings under the Labour Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 25)" — *what it excepts is proceedings in that tribunal, not employment claims as such.* And Part 1 of the same Schedule 2 reads:

Put the two together and this is the other face of the third door in section 5 of this article:

• A claim transferred out of the Tribunal to the Court of First Instance or the District Court under Cap. 25 s.10(2) is no longer "proceedings in the Labour Tribunal", so the item 10 exception stops applying to it from that point, and the proceedings themselves are civil proceedings in a court named in Schedule 2 Part 1 item 1.
• The same goes for an appeal. Cap. 25 section 32(1):

— that is an application to the Court of First Instance, and note its own 7-day limit, extendable by the Registrar of the High Court on good cause.

• And for the appeal there is a provision written for exactly this: Cap. 91 Schedule 3 (the Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme), Part 1, item 8:

The scope, stated to its limit: all of the above is about which category the Ordinance puts a class of proceedings in. Whether any person actually receives legal aid turns on Cap. 91 section 10 as well — the Director's satisfaction as to financial resources, and the grounds in section 10(3), one of which (paragraph (c)) is that it is unreasonable that the applicant should be granted legal aid in the particular circumstances of the case; and under section 18 an aided person may have to pay a contribution, computed under section 32 for the Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme. This article states only where the Ordinance files each class of proceedings. It does not and cannot say whether any reader qualifies, or whether anyone should apply. The separate Free Legal Advice Scheme, on GovHK's own account, generally arranges a meeting with a volunteer lawyer around 3–4 weeks after booking (within two weeks for urgent cases) and gives preliminary advice only, with no follow-up and no representation.

There is a live error on a government page that a reader should know about: GovHK's legal-advice page still tells applicants they must satisfy the Procedural Advice Scheme's income eligibility limit, although that limit was abolished on 4 September 2023 — the English notice uses the word uplifted, and the Chinese version settles the ambiguity by using 撤銷, abolished. This is a fact about that page, not a comparison between service providers.

No ceiling; but there is a floor, and it is not written as a dollar figure in any section of Cap. 25

No section of Cap. 25 states any threshold as a sum of money. ⚠ But that does not answer what the reader is actually asking. Two limits have to be stated at once: first, the Tribunal's jurisdiction is not written in the sections at all; second, the floor is not written as a sum of money — it is written as a cross-reference.

Where the jurisdiction is: Cap. 25 section 7(1) gives the tribunal jurisdiction over "the claims specified in the Schedule". The line is at the end of paragraph 1 of that Schedule:

The Chinese authentic text reads 「但《小額薪酬索償仲裁處條例》(第453章)附表內指明的申索除外。」

Paragraph 4 of the same Schedule, on severance payment, carries the identical words. So: a claim specified in the Schedule to Cap. 453 is outside the Labour Tribunal's jurisdiction — and what that Schedule specifies is stated above: not more than 10 claimants, not more than $15,000 per claimant, for a right of action arising on or after 17 September 2021:

Add Cap. 453 section 5(2): save as provided in that Ordinance, no claim within the Board's jurisdiction is actionable in any court. So the accurate proposition is: Cap. 25 prints no dollar figure anywhere, and it nonetheless carves the sub-$15,000 band out by cross-reference. "No ceiling and no floor" is therefore wrong.

The Judiciary's own account is the same. The Report of the Working Party on the Review of the Labour Tribunal (LC Paper CB(2)136/04-05, 118 pages) says at paragraph 2.13 that the Tribunal's jurisdiction is prescribed by section 7 and the Schedule and that, other than claims falling within the jurisdiction of the Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board, the Tribunal has exclusive jurisdiction over the categories it lists; paragraph 2.14 of the same report sets out the power described under the third door below. (Paraphrased from that report, not quoted.)

And the power that moves it, stated with it: Cap. 453 section 6 — "The Commissioner may by notice in the Gazette amend the Schedule." $15,000 is therefore not a fixed quantity but a level that a Gazette notice can change without any Bill.

$15,000 is the Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board's own per-claimant ceiling, for a right of action arising on or after 17 September 2021 (previously $8,000), for not more than 10 claimants — and the Commissioner for Labour may amend that Schedule by notice in the Gazette (above). The Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board also has a limitation period of its own, built like the two in section 6 below. Cap. 453 section 7(1):

Twelve months, and the only way past it is a memorandum signed by the parties and filed with the registrar. That limit is that Board's, not the Labour Tribunal's.

What is above is how the Ordinance draws the line. How the three forums interlock, how the procedure runs, and which forum any individual claim will actually end up in is a different article's question — see the Labour Tribunal: which claims it takes .

The third door: the Tribunal can send the case away, for any reason

Cap. 25 section 7(2) is often quoted for exclusive jurisdiction:

But read the opening words: "Save as is provided in this Ordinance". The Ordinance does provide. Section 10(1):

Section 10(2):

On those two subsections: the words impose no test, no threshold and no monetary trigger — "for any reason", on the Tribunal's own opinion. ⚠ That is a statement about the subsections, not about the practice. A discretion expressed in open words is still exercised on recognised considerations.

But section 10 has six subsections, not two, and the other four carve out a whole class of claim. Sections 10(3) to (6) each provide:

Sections 10(4), (5) and (6) are identical in form, pointing to sections 73C, 73D and 73E of the District Court Ordinance. So: where a claim was transferred into the Tribunal under rules made under Cap. 336 ss.73B–73E, section 10 does not apply to it at all, and the Tribunal cannot use section 10 to send it on. The power described above is a power over a claim brought in the Tribunal in the first place.

And the same reading has to be applied to section 7 itself. Section 7(2), quoted above, is one of six subsections; the four that follow it are that subsection's own express carve-outs:

Sections 7(4), (5) and (6) repeat the form for sections 73C, 73D and 73E. So "Save as is provided in this Ordinance" is not a formula: the Ordinance provides four times inside section 7 itself, before it provides again in section 10.

And this is not hypothetical. Footnote 1 of the judgment discussed in section 3 records:

This site's reading (sections 7(2), 10(1) and 10(2) read together): the exclusivity in section 7(2) is a prohibition on suing elsewhere, not a guarantee of staying here. And the two things a claimant most often chooses the Tribunal for — that neither side may bring a lawyer, and that costs do not follow the event — are neither of them guaranteed.

And the second one has a further layer: even if the case stays in the Tribunal from beginning to end, costs exposure is not zero. Cap. 25 section 28 is headed Costs:

Three levels, kept apart: (i) in the Tribunal itself, section 28 lets the tribunal award a party costs and expenses, including reasonable expenses necessarily incurred and salary or wages lost in attending a hearing or being interviewed by a tribunal officer, and by section 28(3) an award of costs is enforceable like any other award. That is not High Court costs-follow-the-event, and it is not nothing either. (ii) Once a claim is transferred out under section 10(2), or (iii) on a section 32 appeal, the court's own costs rules apply. The Report of the Working Party on the Review of the Labour Tribunal records at paragraphs 5.122 to 5.127 that the proposals to cap costs on appeal, and not to award costs against an unsuccessful party on a Tribunal appeal, were not adopted, the Working Party seeing no compelling justification for them; the same passages record the contrary arguments deputations put. (Paraphrased, not quoted.)

The Tribunal's fees are in subsidiary legislation — the fee scale is a statutory Schedule, not a departmental price list. Rule 2 of the Labour Tribunal (Fees) Rules (Cap. 25, sub. leg. B; version in force 1 February 2018):

*Item 1 of that Schedule, Filing of claim, has four bands, set by the amount of the claim:*

The same Schedule also prescribes $45 for an "Application for review" (item 3), $45 for an "Application for leave to appeal" (item 4), and $25 for a "Subpoena and copy including service, each witness" (item 2).

⚠ These are not fixed figures, and the power that moves them is in the legislation itself. The Schedule is the Schedule to rules made under section 45 of the Labour Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 25), so amending the Schedule changes the fee; and in an individual case rule 4 of Cap. 25 sub. leg. B gives the registrar a separate power:

Two further figures are not in that Schedule, so they are kept separate. The Judiciary's Labour Tribunal page adds two: $10 falls due for every address at which the defendant has to be reached with the papers, and the two forms it names — an "Application to Set Aside an Award/Order" and an "Application for Restoration of a Claim" — carry a prescribed $45 each. (This site's summary of that page; the page's own fee table is headed "as at December 2017".) The only $10 in the Cap. 25 sub. leg. B Schedule is item 5(b), "Each additional copy". The $10 per address is therefore the Judiciary page's figure, not a Schedule fee.

What the published waiting times measure, and what they do not

Over 2019–2024, from filing to first hearing: 25, 23, 22, 24, 23 and 23 days against the Tribunal's own 30-day target, met in all six years. Over the same years, from appointment to filing: 29, 61, 25, 28, 38 and 36 days against the same 30-day target, missed in three.

Neither figure measures time to a decision. And the Judiciary's own definition of a disposal includes claims transferred — so on that definition a case that leaves the Tribunal is counted as concluded.

One case, for illustration: in the case above, dismissal (a Termination Letter dated 7 September 2018) to judgment (18 June 2025) is 2,476 days — 6.8 years; the transfer order of 6 June 2019 to judgment is 2,204 days. That is one transferred High Court case, not a Tribunal case, and it is not comparable as a rate with the averages above. What the two are comparable on is what is being measured: the Judiciary publishes the wait at the front of the process and stops counting at disposal; the case above was still running six years after it was disposed of.

How many people go this way — and one number that is not a success rate

⚠ Every Labour Department figure below comes from the Department's 2016–2024 statistics.

• In 2024 the Labour Department handled 13,029 labour disputes and claims and settled 77.4% through conciliation. Over 2016–2024 the settlement rate ran 72.9, 71.7, 74.1, 75.9, 74.7, 74.6, 75.9, 77.2 and 77.4 per cent.
• Of the 12,940 claims the Labour Relations Division handled in 2024, termination of contract accounted for 4,585 — 35.4%, down from 6,670 of 14,672 (45.5%) in 2016. 2024 is the first year in that nine-year series in which wage disputes (5,338, 41.3%) overtook it.
• From 2018 to 2022 the Labour Department handled 40 Part VI A claim cases in which employees asked for reinstatement or re-engagement. For scale: the same body, the same counting unit (claims, each involving 20 or fewer employees) and the same five years — 13,691 (2018) + 13,755 (2019) + 10,991 (2020) + 11,064 (2021) + 10,615 (2022) = 60,116 claims. 40 of 60,116 is 0.067%, about 1 claim in 1,500 in which anyone asked for their job back. The unit is claims, not people: one claim is not one person, so the ratio is not a head count. Of the 40, 17 settled at the Department and 23 were filed with the Tribunal; of those 23, 22 never reached a ruling at all (6 withdrawn, 9 settled by monetary remedy with both parties' consent, 7 adjourned sine die), and 1 was ruled against the employee. That is the Part VI A population, not the position facing a summary-dismissal claimant.

None of these is a success rate. The Judiciary's own definition of a disposal covers claims awarded, dismissed, settled, withdrawn and transferred alike — which is precisely why its figures cannot be read as outcomes.

6. Time limits: more than one clock — and the most general answer is in the Limitation Ordinance, not the Labour Tribunal Ordinance

The most general answer is in the Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347), and it is six years. Section 4(1), as consolidated 9 July 2020 — the lead-in with paragraph (a):

And paragraph (d) of the same subsection, with (b) and (c) intervening:

A claim for wages in lieu of notice is a claim on the contract of employment and so an action founded on simple contract under paragraph (a); a sum claimed directly by virtue of a provision of the Ordinance falls under paragraph (d). Either way it is six years, running from the date the cause of action accrued. The scope has to be stated: section 4 sets other periods for other actions in the same section (twelve years on a specialty, two years for a penalty), and other provisions of the Limitation Ordinance deal with disability, fraud and acknowledgment. The point to remember: Cap. 347 s.4(1) is the general answer, and it is not in the Labour Tribunal Ordinance.

As for the Labour Tribunal Ordinance itself: it sets no limitation period of its own for an ordinary claim. No section of Cap. 25 fixes any period within which a claim must be brought.

A Part VI A claim runs two clocks, and each is stated here with the power that can move it:

• 3 months — a claim made by notice in writing to the employer before the end of the period of 3 months beginning with the relevant date, or within such extended period not exceeding 6 months as the Commissioner may permit.
• 9 months — or a claim filed with the Registrar of the Labour Tribunal before the end of the period of 9 months beginning with the relevant date. Beyond the 9 months the Tribunal has no jurisdiction unless the parties, by a memorandum signed by them and filed with the Registrar, have agreed that it shall.

Neither is a fact about the calendar. Each is a fact about the statute's structure — one extendable by the Commissioner, the other waivable by the parties' filed agreement. Both limits apply to a Part VI A claim (see unreasonable vs unlawful dismissal ), not to an ordinary claim for wages in lieu of notice.

7. How other places do it — and why English formulations do not simply transfer

Two comparable systems put the allocation in the instrument a claimant is pointed to. Hong Kong's is in the common law that section 9(1)(b) imports — which is exactly why it is stated by the Judiciary, the Law Reform Commission and practitioners rather than by the Ordinance.

England puts it on the face of the statute. Employment Rights Act 1996, section 98(1) (UK legislation from legislation.gov.uk, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0):

But the next subsection sets the scope of the comparison, and it favours neither side:

So what England allocates on the face of the statute is the burden of showing the reason — not a burden of showing the dismissal was justified, which under s.98(4) is a determination that carries no burden on either party.

The qualifying period under that Act is two years (s.108(1)), and the tribunal time limit is three months, extendable on a not-reasonably-practicable test (s.111(2)). The two years is a dated fact: the text relied on here is the legislation.gov.uk revised text, as at 28 August 2026. And it already has an amendment that is not in force: the Employment Rights Act 2025 (c. 36), s.25(2)(a) reads "in subsection (1), for "two years" substitute "six months";", and s.25 was not in force at Royal Assent (s.159(3)). So two years is the position at that version date, not a settled one.

⚠ That amendment now has an announced commencement date. The UK Government's business guidance site (business.gov.uk) states that from 1 January 2027 the qualifying period for protection against ordinary unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months, that the qualifying period attaching to an employee’s right to ask for the reason for a dismissal in writing drops to six months on the same date, and that the cap on the compensatory award a tribunal may award is removed from that date; where a termination takes effect earlier than that date, the period that governs is still the present two years. (This site's summary of that page.) That is an announced date, not a completed commencement: section 159(3) of the Employment Rights Act 2025 (from legislation.gov.uk, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0) leaves commencement to a power —

— so when section 25 comes into force is for the Secretary of State to set by regulations. Read against the legislation.gov.uk revised text: that page states it is up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 29 August 2026, section 25's commencement note still reads "S. 25 not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 159(3)", and only section 25(5) is recorded in force from 1 July 2026 for specified purposes by S.I. 2026/559. So: two years remains the law at that version date; six months has an announced start date of 1 January 2027; and as at those dates the revised text records no regulations bringing section 25 as a whole into force.

Singapore publishes it in the Government Gazette. The Tripartite Guidelines on Wrongful Dismissal did not begin in 2024: the Ministry of Manpower and its two tripartite partners released a set of guidelines on what constitutes wrongful dismissal on 1 April 2019, alongside the transfer of wrongful-dismissal adjudication from the Ministry to the Employment Claims Tribunals. The current guidelines were first published in the Gazette on 23 July 2024, and state at paragraph 4 that where misconduct or poor performance is cited as the reason for dismissal the employer bears the burden of proving that ground, and that the dismissal is wrongful if the employer cannot.

This site's reading (Cap. 57 s.9 read against ERA 1996 ss.98(1) and 98(4)): both comparators put the allocation of who must produce the reason for the dismissal inside the statute a claimant is sent to read. Hong Kong's section 9 does not — which is why, here, the proposition has to be carried by a Judiciary pamphlet, a Law Reform Commission footnote and law firm articles instead. The comparison stops there: what England writes into the statute is the burden of showing the reason, not the whole question whether the dismissal was justified, which s.98(4) leaves with no burden on either side. So the English arrangement is not the same proposition as the Hong Kong one that an employer must prove a summary dismissal justified.

But do not import the English formulation on that account — and the limit is the Court of Final Appeal's own. In FACV 2/2005:

>

The scope matters: the Court rejected an English gloss, not employee protection. Section 32A(2)'s assistance to the employee was left entirely intact, and the employer won that appeal on its facts — so Hong Kong's case law does not run in one direction, and employers do not usually lose.