Zambia

Impact date: 2 September 2025 Two permanent employees’ contracts were terminated after a change in the ownership of their employer. They were instead offered fixed-term contracts, which they declined. They claimed redundancy benefits and damages for unfair dismissal before the Industrial Relations Division of the High Court. The High Court ruled in their favour, including on the basis that the terminations were not justified on operational reasons. In particular, Court found that a change in shareholding alone does not constitute a valid operational requirement.

The employer appealed. The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision. There was no evidence of specific operational challenges, financial data, or internal analysis demonstrating the necessity of the restructuring. Further, the correspondence issued to employees, while procedurally compliant in form, lacked substantive justification. The Court of Appeal emphasized that the mere issuance of a letter citing operational requirements, without supporting evidence or meaningful engagement with affected employees, does not satisfy the dual requirements of procedural and substantive fairness.

Impact date: 19 September 2025 The case concerned a legal practitioner engaged in private legal practice. Concurrently with being engaged in this practice, he was subsequently also employed as an in-house legal practitioner by the Occupational Health and Safety Institute (OHSI) as Board Secretary. His role involved providing legal and corporate governance services to the OHSI. Following a dispute, the OHSI challenged this dual engagement, submitting that it violated the Legal Practitioners Practice Rules and his employment contract.

Following appeals from the High Court and the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court held that employed (in-house) legal practitioners are prohibited from providing legal services to anyone other than their employer, effectively limiting them to a single client, the employer.

Impact date: 23 September 2025 Following her resignation, an employee brought a claim against her employer alleging constructive dismissal. The employee alleged a hostile and unhealthy work environment created by the Board chair. In particular, she alleged that the Board chair sent messages after hours instead of the usual work emails, was micromanaging and directly supervising her instead of her immediate boss, and used demeaning and unpalatable language.

The Court upheld the claim, awarding the employee 12 months’ salary as damages for constructive dismissal.

Impact date: 30 September 2025 An employee claimed unfair and wrongful dismissal and reimbursement for untaken leave days. At the time of her dismissal, the employee’s previous fixed term contract had expired and she had not signed a new contract that had been offered to her, as negotiations remained ongoing regarding her salary. In its defense, the employer alleged that since the employee had not signed the new contract, she could not pursue her claims as there was no contract in existence that could be relied on.

The High Court allowed the employee’s claims and awarded her damages of 24 months’ basic pay. The employee had demonstrated that she had agreed to be bound by the contractual terms and conditions embodied in the expired contract which she knew were similar to the contract proposed for renewal, and as such had continued to work beyond the end of her previous fixed term contract . Additionally, the employer had allowed the employee to continue working, and was paying her salaries under the new contract. Therefore, based on the manner in which the parties had conducted themselves, the Court was satisfied that the parties had intended to create a legally binding contractual relationship beyond the end of the expired contract.