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The Two Routes a Labour Claim Can Take Against You

When a former employee decides to come after you in Thailand, they pick one of two roads. One runs through a government official. The other runs through a court. They have different powers, different deadlines and different costs, and the road your former employee picks changes how much control you have over the outcome.

Most Thai employers only learn the difference after a letter arrives. By then some of the choices have already been made for them.

Here is how each route works.

Route one, the labour inspector

This is where most claims start, because it costs the employee nothing.

Your former employee goes to the labour inspector’s office for the area where they worked or where you are domiciled, and files a complaint on the standard form. Section 123 of the Labour Protection Act gives them that right for any money you should have paid under the Act. If the employee has died, their statutory heirs can file instead.

The inspector then investigates. Section 124 gives them sixty days from receiving the complaint to issue an order. They can ask the Director-General for more time, and get up to thirty days more, but that is the limit.

If the inspector concludes you owe money, the order tells you to pay it. You have thirty days from the date you know the order, or are treated as knowing it. If the inspector concludes the employee is owed nothing, they issue an order saying so and notify both sides in writing.

Two features of this route surprise employers.

The inspector can only order money that the Act itself gives. Severance, notice pay, wages, overtime, holiday pay, annual leave pay, special severance. That is the inspector’s territory. Damages for unfair dismissal are not, because those come from Section 49 of the Labour Court Act and only a court can award them (judgment 8335/2560). So an inspector’s order is rarely the whole exposure. It is the floor.

Complying ends the criminal side. Failing to pay severance is not only a civil debt. Section 144 makes it an offence, and Section 158 can reach the managing director or the person responsible for running the company personally. But Section 124/1 says that if you comply with the inspector’s order within the time given, the criminal proceedings against you end. That is a real incentive to pay a correct order rather than fight it.

The deadline that decides everything

If you do not accept the inspector’s order, Section 125 gives you thirty days from knowing it to take the case to the Labour Court. Your former employee has the same thirty days if the order went against them.

If nobody goes to court in thirty days, the order is final.

Now the part that costs employers real money. Section 125 has a third paragraph. When the employer is the party taking the case to court, the employer must first deposit with the court the full amount that has fallen due under the order. You cannot file until you have. The money sits with the court and is paid out when the case ends.

Read that again in cash-flow terms. If an inspector orders you to pay a large severance sum and you want to challenge it, you have to find that sum in thirty days and hand it over before you are allowed to argue. An employee challenging the same order has no such requirement.

That asymmetry is the whole reason the inspector’s investigation matters more than employers think. The cheapest place to win is in front of the inspector, on the documents, inside those sixty days. It is far more expensive to win later.

The other kind of inspector order

There is a second power that gets confused with the first, and the appeal route is completely different.

Section 139(3) lets an inspector issue a written order requiring you to comply with the Act. That is not a money order on an employee’s complaint. It is a compliance order, and an inspector can make one after their own inspection, without any complaint at all. Section 139(1) lets them enter your premises during working hours, inspect conditions, question people, and copy your employment, payroll and employee register documents. Section 140 requires you to cooperate and not obstruct them.

If you disagree with a Section 139(3) order, Section 141 says you appeal to the Director-General within the time stated in the order. The Director-General must decide without delay and within thirty days of receiving your appeal, and that decision is final. There is no thirty-day trip to the Labour Court from here.

Appealing does not suspend the order. You still have to comply unless the Director-General says otherwise or accepts security from you. And as with a money order, complying with the order or with the Director-General’s decision inside the time limit ends the criminal proceedings.

So the same official can issue two orders with two different appeal routes. One goes to the Labour Court in thirty days with a deposit. One goes to the Director-General and stops there. Employers who mix them up miss the only window they had.

Route two, the Labour Court

Your former employee can skip the inspector and sue you directly. Section 8 of the Labour Court Act sets out what the Labour Court hears, and it is broad. Disputes about rights or duties under an employment contract or under the conditions of employment. Disputes under the labour protection and labour relations laws. Cases where a right has to be exercised through the court. Appeals against a competent official’s decision. Wrongful act claims between employer and employee connected with the work. And labour disputes referred by the Minister.

Three things make the Labour Court unlike a commercial court.

It tries to settle your case before it tries it. Section 38 requires the court to mediate once both parties appear. This is not a formality. A large share of labour cases end here, and an employer who walks in with organised documents and a realistic number settles better than one who walks in denying everything.

It can order you to take the employee back. Under Section 49, if the court finds the dismissal was unfair, its first remedy is reinstatement at the old wage. Money is the fallback, used when the court accepts that the two of you can no longer work together. Employers who assume the worst case is a payment sometimes get a different worst case.

When it does fix money, there is no formula. Section 49 tells the court to weigh the employee’s age, their length of service, the hardship the dismissal caused them, the reason for the dismissal, and the severance they are already entitled to. No multiplier, no ceiling.

One more point that is easy to miss. Winning on unfairness and winning on severance are separate questions. In judgment 3306/2567 the Supreme Court held that the employer had proper cause to dismiss and the dismissal was not unfair, so the employee got no notice pay and no unfair dismissal damages, and yet the employer still had to pay severance because the employee’s breach of the work rules was not serious enough to remove that right. One dismissal, two different answers.

Appeals are narrower than you expect

If you lose in the Labour Court, your appeal is limited.

Section 54 allows an appeal only on a question of law, and it goes to the Court of Appeal for Specialized Cases, within fifteen days from the date the judgment is read. That structure came in with Amendment No. 3 B.E. 2558.

Section 56 then binds the appeal court to the facts the Labour Court found. It can order further evidence, but it does not retry the facts.

Put those two together and the practical rule is this. The findings of fact made in the Labour Court are, for most purposes, final. If the Labour Court accepts your former employee’s account of what happened in your office, you will not get a second hearing on it by calling it an error. You will only get a hearing on whether the law was applied correctly to those accepted facts.

Section 55 adds that filing an appeal does not by itself stop enforcement, although you can ask the Labour Court to delay enforcement for proper cause.

Your former employee has to pick one road

An employee cannot run both routes at the same time for the same claim. The Ministry of Labour’s own published explanation of the 2025 amendment states it directly. For a claim about unpaid wages during statutory leave, the employee either files in the Labour Court or complains to a labour inspector, and must choose only one, because running both would duplicate the enforcement of the same right.

That is useful to know when a claim arrives. If you are already dealing with an inspector on a money claim, the same money claim should not also be sitting in court.

It cuts the other way too. Because an inspector cannot award unfair dismissal damages, an employee who wants those has to go to court for them. A claim that starts with an inspector and looks small can grow when it moves.

How long your exposure lasts

Thai law does not use one period for all employment claims.

Claims for wages and other remuneration for work done run for two years under Section 193/34(9) of the Civil and Commercial Code. That covers wages, overtime and holiday pay.

Severance is not remuneration for work done, so it falls under the general rule in Section 193/30, which is ten years. Damages for unfair dismissal under Section 49 are not remuneration either.

So a payroll error can go quiet after two years while a severance claim stays live for a decade. Employers who clear out personnel files at the end of a two-year retention cycle sometimes destroy the only evidence they had for the longer claim.

Separately, and much shorter, is the thirty days under Section 125 to challenge an inspector’s order. Miss that and the order is final regardless of any other period.

The interest clock is running the whole time

While all of this proceeds, Section 9 charges interest at fifteen percent per year on unpaid severance and the other sums the Act requires, running from the date each fell due. Severance falls due on the dismissal date. Annual leave pay falls due three days after dismissal under Section 70, so its interest starts on the fourth day. The Supreme Court applied exactly that split in judgment 3306/2567.

Section 9 also has a surcharge. If you intentionally fail to pay without reasonable cause, then once seven days have passed from the due date you owe a further fifteen percent of the unpaid amount for every additional seven days. You can stop the interest and the surcharge by depositing the money with the Director-General for the employee.

A long fight over a sum you were always going to owe is therefore not a neutral delay. It has a price per week.

What to do when the letter arrives

Do not ignore the inspector. Non-cooperation is its own offence under Section 140, and the inspector will reach a conclusion with or without you, on whatever the employee has given them.

Find the date. Whether your clock is thirty days from an order under Section 125, or the period stated in a Section 139(3) order, or fifteen days from a judgment, the deadline is the first thing to establish and the easiest thing to lose.

Pull the five documents that decide most cases. The employment contract. The work rules. Any warning letters. The termination letter. The payroll record for the final period.

Read your own termination letter before you argue anything. If it does not state the factual reason for the dismissal, the last paragraph of Section 119 stops you raising that reason now, and your case is about how much rather than whether.

Then decide, on the numbers, whether you are better off complying. A correct order complied with in time ends the criminal exposure under Section 124/1 and stops the interest. A wrong order is worth challenging. Telling those apart before the thirty days run out is the whole job.

Where to get this checked

We act for employers. If a labour inspector has contacted you, or you have been served in the Labour Court, send us the order or the complaint together with the employment contract, the work rules, any warning letters and the termination letter.

Aphiwat Bualoi Law Office Co., Ltd., Chiang Mai. Write to aphiwat@aphiwatlaw.com.

This post explains the law in general terms and is not advice on your situation.

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