Discrimination case??
ady19792
Posts: 17 Forumite
I work for a large national train company based at a railway station, their are 2 train different train companies on site.
Recently a vacancy came up doing the same job as I do now (with 8 years experience) working for them. I approached their long serving manager who I have a good relationship with as we share a yard stating I was interested in their vacancy and how do I apply? He was very keen and told me he would love to have me working for them and gave me the details.
I applied for the job and for a few weeks he was really chatty and saying hope you get the position. Then suddenly a few days later he became very distant telling me they had loads of applications and had narrowed it down to 6 people.
I spoke to his work colleague (this manager is not liked very much by his staff, apparantly he is very lazy, gives himself the best hours and overtime) and when I said he has become a bit distant he informed me that the managers brother in law was just made redundant and this person showed me emails in the deleted folder of a laptop (which is shared on site) from the manager to a senior manager saying "give my brother in law the job" and "send me a copy of the questions that he will be asked in interview"
The interviews were then carried out by neither the site manager, nor the person the site manager had been emailing. A few weeks later, I was interviewed felt it went really well but ended up being unsuccessful.
The brother in law with zero experience has got the job, neither of the other staff are happy as they feel the manager and brother in law between them will give themselves the best shifts and overtime.
The emails shown to me was in confidence and the person showing them to me was worried about repercussions and said I cannot give you a copy.
The manager in question has 40 years service so a lot of staff beneath him are scared of him.
So after making all the effort going for an interview was looking for some advice as I feel I have a discrimination case here, would like people's thoughts or opinions
Recently a vacancy came up doing the same job as I do now (with 8 years experience) working for them. I approached their long serving manager who I have a good relationship with as we share a yard stating I was interested in their vacancy and how do I apply? He was very keen and told me he would love to have me working for them and gave me the details.
I applied for the job and for a few weeks he was really chatty and saying hope you get the position. Then suddenly a few days later he became very distant telling me they had loads of applications and had narrowed it down to 6 people.
I spoke to his work colleague (this manager is not liked very much by his staff, apparantly he is very lazy, gives himself the best hours and overtime) and when I said he has become a bit distant he informed me that the managers brother in law was just made redundant and this person showed me emails in the deleted folder of a laptop (which is shared on site) from the manager to a senior manager saying "give my brother in law the job" and "send me a copy of the questions that he will be asked in interview"
The interviews were then carried out by neither the site manager, nor the person the site manager had been emailing. A few weeks later, I was interviewed felt it went really well but ended up being unsuccessful.
The brother in law with zero experience has got the job, neither of the other staff are happy as they feel the manager and brother in law between them will give themselves the best shifts and overtime.
The emails shown to me was in confidence and the person showing them to me was worried about repercussions and said I cannot give you a copy.
The manager in question has 40 years service so a lot of staff beneath him are scared of him.
So after making all the effort going for an interview was looking for some advice as I feel I have a discrimination case here, would like people's thoughts or opinions
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Comments
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Even if you have a case, you need to prove it by showing those emails I suppose. Doesn't your company has a formal process where you can demand to see your interview results and also raise the point about him recruiting a family member over yourself and other applicants. If emails sent through the company property, IT department should be able to dig them even though they are deleted. You said that the laptop is a shared one, so anyone could have seen them?
Manager's laziness or brother-in-law lack of experience is not the problem here. Although annoying, it wouldn't come across unbiased after as an applicant, you didn't get the job.ally.0 -
sangie will berate me if I don't post this, but discrimination of a protected characteristic includes:
age
being or becoming a transsexual person
being married or in a civil partnership
being pregnant or on maternity leave
disability
race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
religion, belief or lack of religion/belief
sex
sexual orientation
Do you feel that you have been "discriminated" under any of those? If not, you don't really have much of a case in the way of discrimination I'm afraid
(unless you have asthma :rotfl: )
Sorry lad, but I think it is one of them here You've been stitched up and chewed out big time. We've all been there! You just have to keep pushing on. 0 -
sangie will berate me if I don't post this, but discrimination of a protected characteristic includes:
age
being or becoming a transsexual person
being married or in a civil partnership
being pregnant or on maternity leave
disability
race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
religion, belief or lack of religion/belief
sex
sexual orientation
Do you feel that you have been "discriminated" under any of those? If not, you don't really have much of a case in the way of discrimination I'm afraid (unless you have asthma :rotfl: )
Sorry lad, but I think it is one of them here You've been stitched up and chewed out big time. We've all been there! You just have to keep pushing on.
I wasn't planning on doing so, but if you really want me to, please just drop me a note next time telling me what you want me to say. (And no matter how many times you raise the irrelevant subject elsewhere, asthma is still a disability under the criteria laid down in the Equality Act 2010; and the fact that you don't like that, or that you would like a nice neat list of what is in and what is out, is also irrelevant).
You missed out membership or non-membership of a trades union
Discrimination is about more than just things covered by the Equality Act. If you are going to try to bait people, you really should try doing it more effectively. Whatever you think I did not report you. If I had, you would have been very aware of it because I would have told you (and everyone else) that I had.
Past that, OP, I agree. There is no case here, even if you could prove it, which you cannot. And to be honest, you seemed to like this manager well enough when you appeared to think his influence might be helpful for you, didn't you? One minute he is really chatty and you have had a very good relationship with him so you approached him; but then he's just what the staff say, lazy and so on. I am not foolish enough to think that this sort of thing doesn't go on day in and day out across all industries. In fact there was a report published last year that evidenced that a major contributor to familial unemployment (multiple members of a family being out of work) and youth unemployment, has been the ending of the traditional manufacturing and other industries with there tradition of "sons following fathers" type of employment. Who you know has always been a factor - and will continue to be so. It isn't unlawful.
And isn't it just the same kind of nepotism, being able to dig through his emails because you know someone?
It would be really nice if everything in the world were fair. It isn't. And nor is it the case that if he hadn't got the job, you would have. And if they ever find out that you, by whatever means, have been digging through company email, you can expect the company to never want to employ you.0 -
I do wonder at times as to why people believe certain things are just a given to them, As per above post completely and don't forget the fact that you went snooping here will 100% go against you.0
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Forget it and move on. You do not have a discrimination case. The only way you would have some sort of discrimination case is if they made the decision on some form of protected characteristic such as gender, race, sexual orientation etc.
You may have been overlooked in favour of a poorer candidate but that is not illegal. It is perfectly legal for an employer to give a job to whoever they wish.0 -
The only thing you can say is even if the brother-in-law hadn't come on the scene, you might still not have got the job.
Something similar happened to me years ago in that I discovered a "conspiracy" not to even interview me for a promotion. I raised a grievance with HR and eventually received a modest ex-gratia payment but to be honest going down that road only added to the upset, and in view of the amount received, I probably wouldn't bother if it happened again, even though I felt I scored a moral victory.0 -
The only thing you can say is even if the brother-in-law hadn't come on the scene, you might still not have got the job.
Something similar happened to me years ago in that I discovered a "conspiracy" not to even interview me for a promotion. I raised a grievance with HR and eventually received a modest ex-gratia payment but to be honest going down that road only added to the upset, and in view of the amount received, I probably wouldn't bother if it happened again, even though I felt I scored a moral victory.
Believe it or not, that is often what I hear people who have won tribunals say. And I don't just mean people who won "a little bit of money". Many times, I have heard them say that even if the same thing happened again, and they had a great claim, they simply wouldn't do it. Because it makes them feel worse for longer, and the money at the end wasn't worth it.0 -
Richard Dimbleby; David Dimbleby
Tony Benn; Hillary Benn
Timothy West; Sam West
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Patronage and nepotism are rife. If your father was an actor, a doctor, or a dustman, then you can be too.
Equal opportunities are for black disabled lesbian mothers. The rest of us have to run with the pack.0 -
Richard Dimbleby; David Dimbleby
Tony Benn; Hillary Benn
Timothy West; Sam West
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Patronage and nepotism are rife. If your father was an actor, a doctor, or a dustman, then you can be too.
Equal opportunities are for black disabled lesbian mothers. The rest of us have to run with the pack.
Did you find this written on toilet roll as that is the only place it belongs, Complete nonsense if ever I heard it.0 -
Believe it or not, that is often what I hear people who have won tribunals say. And I don't just mean people who won "a little bit of money". Many times, I have heard them say that even if the same thing happened again, and they had a great claim, they simply wouldn't do it. Because it makes them feel worse for longer, and the money at the end wasn't worth it.
Yes I can believe it - it's a shame in a way as I think it leads to employers getting away with a lot they shouldn't, but you also hear it in relation to far more serious matters e.g. crimes of rape etc. The complainant really does go through the wringer, and it's a toss-up between not bringing a case thereby preserving your own sanity and peace of mind, or acting for the greater good (or at least a moral victory) and going through with it.
In my case the promotion issue was the last straw in a poor relationship with the employer and I was ready to leave anyway, which I did shortly after getting the payout. I think it would have been even worse had I actually wanted to continue working there.0
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