Employment Tribunal - unfair dismissal - student surveys

sangie595 wrote: »

Really OP, you have had a great deal of very good advice here, but you aren't listening to it. I seriously don't know if you can win a tribunal, but unless you listen to what you are being told, I can tell you that you will lose one!

You are pinning a great deal of reliance on two matters - the fact that you are good at what you do, and an entirely convoluted alternative scenario that will simply make the tribunal question your veracity even more.

On the first one, you may be the best in your field. You may have personal references from world famous people. And former students. Not one of those things means that you are telling the truth or that you are not a cheat. Being good or well connected does not mean that you are above reproach. Plenty of "good" and well connected people have been caught out before now. Your argument on these grounds is less than relevant - it is not going to help you at all, and frankly, the employer did the right thing in disregarding it - it wasn't of any import.

On the second, as you have already been told, the tribunal do not hear your side of the story, then the employees, and decide which one they like better. They listen to the employers side of the story, and decide whether that is enough to form a reasonable belief. So the employers story is easy. It depends on only two things. A series of student evaluations were falsified, and the IP address from which they were falsified belonged to you. That's it. That's all they needed. There is no way on earth that they are going to going to find that an unreasonable basis for believing you did it. You see, the test isn't whether it was true or not. You could now find absolute evidence - a signed confession by the perpetrator would be nice - and you will STILL lose the tribunal, because the employer heard a case and had a reasonable belief at the time of the decision. There have been more than one claim lost in that way - subsequent evidence that some one want guilty does not supersede the employers decision at the time.

But consider your story. An anonymous person happens to have identified your password details somehow. They have then been able to exploit some kind of back door in the software being used. Then they have identified your IP address and somehow "pinged" it just to know when to falsify these results. And your unknown and very skilled enemy then gave you GOOD evaluations??? How likely does that sound? If you inserted a Martian invasion somewhere in the middle of that it could not sound less credible. If they had been lousy evaluations the story would have still seemed far fetched, but at least there would be a kind of internal sense to it. That's the sort of thing you might expect of an aggrieved student or colleague. But not for some faceless enemy to give you good outcomes. Again, the thing is not whether it is true or not. The point is, can anyone reasonably be expected to believe this? Sorry, but the answer is no. And if toy unfold this alternative scenario to a tribunal, that is exactly what they will think too. You are making your version less crucible, not more credible. And any evidence that you find now to support that version was not available to the employer, so their reasonable belief and fair dismissal stay in place. The tribunal can't base a judgement on new evidence that the employer didn't have.

So that only leaves you procedural matters - was the prices carried out directly. They employer want required to tell you that you were under investigation before they are ready to. So the fact that your are being investigated for a month and a half without being told is irrelevant. The alleged bias of the investigating officer is not evidenced in any way. The fact upon which the investigation depends is evidenced. It is true. Evaluations were falsified, and from an IP address associated with you. There is no room for bias or opinion in that. It is either true or not, and even you accept it is true. So the investigation appears to have been impartial. Whether the person likes you or not doesn't matter, and your allegation that they don't like you doesn't mean that it is true either. It is for you to evidence your defence, with your union. Not for them to go investigating what appear to be fabulous versions of events. So they present the outcome of their investigation, you provide a defence, and a disciplinary panel decide.

So is there any part of the process that wasn't conducted properly, because I'm not seeing it? And to be clear, this is not about whether I believe you or not - it simply is what it is. If you can't find a better case than what you have, you are throwing good money away. And more of your reputation. At this stage, yes, you will have to provide a convincing argument for why someone should employ you after this dismissal. But that can be done. And you have some powerful references you say. Great. They will help. Will LOSING a court case help? No, it won't. You will have a court of law deciding that your employer was correct. And your former employer telling people that. Academia is a very small world. News gets around.

So you need to sit down and seriously, and objectively, think through your position and how far you can take this before it becomes even more damaging to you. Or you need a better case, because the one you have here isn't good. People are trying to tell you that. But you aren't hearing it.