Termination due to theft

Advice appreciated please.


Our DH has confessed to stealing money from us and we would like to terminate our contract with her. Is it a requirement to involve the police? I would rather not as think us terminating her contract, stating the reason in the termination letter and telling any future employers who may contact us is punishment enough.


Many thanks in advance

Pork,


You should sign a letter of termination which is signed by her ( & that states the reason for termination). This will ensure you pay her only for the days that she has worked for & no need to pay for the 30 day notice period i.e. no future labour claims.


As far as police is concerned, you can file a case - but it's her word against yours ( assuming she denies any wrong doing). Termination of contract is a big enough punishment for them considering they have 14 days to find another employer without a valid reference.

Getting the police involved is upto you, really. If you do have valid proof, then you have grounds to. She may not confess anything to the cops...she will know the consequences to that.

If you just state the reason of theft as termination, remember she may/ can get you in trouble for using a false reason. Moreover, she will certainly not show your letter to potential future employers obviously, no one would employ her then!

Either way, I doubt she would any employer contact you as you would talk about ' theft'.

If you dont want to push it, just let her go with a termination letter anyway...stating your reason & contact details...

If she steals from you, do you think she deserves to work for anybody else? Think about it! She is placed in a position of trust and abuses it. What about the next person she works for? Call me callous but the fact is she has been dishonest. If I were you; and in consideration of the fact your DH is quite entitled to dispute your reason for termination, especially if you terminate and exercise your right to do so for gross misconduct i.e. dishonesty and therefore not pay her notice. I would give serious consideration to involving the police. If you don't your DH will most likely persue you for earnings owed etc. AND steal from some other unsuspecting soul. Furthermore, the Immigration Department will side with her in the absense of an official report. In sum, she wins, you lose and somebody else gets the misfortune of hiring a thief. Unfortunately, most people do not steal as a one off. Its normally an habitual habit. Your termination letter will not be worth the paper it is written on and its against Labour Ordinance legislation to give a negative reference that is not substantiated.

Thank you very much for your opinions, it's been quite a stressful day as you can imagine. To give you a bit more detail and background we feel we have been more than a decent employee, after arriving in HK in February on our first overseas work assignment we were unsure about the whole DH situation as coming from the UK it is not common so my wife and I thought we would make an effort to involve her within the family, we paid her above the average, 5k per month, be fairly relaxed and not work her to the grindstone etc. For the first six months this seemed to be really the right approach, we had no compliants with her work, our children liked her, especially my eldest who is now very upset that she has gone. Within the first two months she asked to loan HK 3k to invest in rice fields back home, we loaned her this cash and put it down as a mark of her trust as she was going back home for 2 weeks, she returned the money was deducted from her next three months wages, since then she has asked for two more advances on her monthly salary which we have given to her. On first starting her contract we gave her a octopus card loaded with $200, a modern mobile phone with pay as you go contract, again loaded with $100, a portable DVD player to watch movies in her room.


We have overlooked some things which she done at the time we thought were minor, but now thinking about it were probably signs, example when we went back to UK in the summer she drunk two bottles of wine, admittedly replacing them with the same type but she had no idea of the value of the wine, we are also sure she has been snooping around in places she really should not have been looking but were not 100% so thought best to leave it.


This morning it has come to light that she has stolen 360 pounds over the last six or so weeks, as it was in pounds we did not pick up on it but tracing it back 200 was stolen about 5 weeks ago from a flight bag hidden at the back of a wardrobe, 100 pounds was stolen from my wife jewellery box (which was a gift for my 3 year old sons birthday) and even more annoying 60 pounds from my parents who were our first visitors to HK and left this weekend.


Our helper confessed this to my wife this morning without being confronted on this, we were going to discuss with her tonight, and were not aware of my parents loss untill after she confessed. I asked her to sign the terminaton letter stating gross misconduct and theft, which she reluctantly did, only after pleeding with me not to include the reason or inform immigration. However we would not budge on this clause as rightly pointed out above why should another family suffer this, so if she did not sign we would call the police, we done all of this in the pressance of a witness. We deducted the amount taken from her owed wages and this left her in debit with us and gave her a plane ticket back to the Philippines with additional $600 to get to her home town, $100 food allowance and $150 taxi fare as we wanted her out tonight, she has a sister married to HK resident somewhere in NT.


Fingers crossed for no problems with the government or her.


It will not put us off looking for a new helper, but we will be a lot more careful with our next one.


Hope this doesn't happen to any of you!!! Again thanks for your comments


Best regards

The Labor Dept. told me I had to provide a round trip ticket when I terminate my DH. It sounds like you gave yours a one-way back home?

I took the termination letter to immigration yesterday and a copy of the outbound flight (the guidelines published on the web only state outbound liability) he took the details of the termination and a copy of the letter I had the helper sign, he was not the least bit interested in the flight details.

Rountrip ticket ? I never heard about that as stated in the contract only a ticket to go back to her place of origin.

Yes, that's what he said. Look at the contract, 7 (a) says the employer provides the DH with airfare from home of origin to HK, then airfare home at end of contract. Since the DH was already in HK when I hired her, and I didn't pay for her airfare to get here, I still have to pay it. That's the contract. Of course Immigration Dept. wouldn't care, but Labour Dept. says that's the law.


I'm just asking because I will terminate my DH next week because she left my children unattended to go out and buy some lunch and run errands. I want to be fair, but if I only have to buy a one-way ticket rather than round trip I'd like to know!

librarian,

Thant sounds a bit strange.

When we terminated our DH, we were told by immig to just get her a 1 way tkt back home as I was only responsible for her repatriation while her previous employer was responsible to get her here.

Of course, if you sent your Dh back on holidays then you would have to pay for her return tkt back, however as you are terminating her, she cannot enter HK again unless her next employer wants to employ her. & then they have to pay for her tkt here.

You need to check that again, as you surely dont want her back so why do you pay for her to get here!

im a DH


and employer is obliged to pay a ONE WAY TICKET TO PHP when terminating the contract...


not a round trip ticket.. the round trip ticket only applies if your hired her from the php.. youl pay for her ticket from php and of cors you get her a ticket when the contract finishes or is terminated...