Constructive discharge

What does “constructive discharge” mean?

Constructive discharge is a resignation treated in law as a termination, because the employer knowingly permitted working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person would have felt compelled to resign.

The bar is deliberately high. Ordinary dissatisfaction, a difficult manager or an unwelcome reassignment do not usually meet it. Sustained conditions the employer knew about and did not correct are a different matter.

Employers most often encounter the concept after the fact, when a resignation they treated as voluntary is characterised differently.