Bit of a mess

spring_chicken

Hi, hope this is the correct place to post. Basically in a nutshell my husband went off sick from work last year because he was under a great amount of stress from workplace bullying, he works in the public sector and without going into too many details, he has the lives of the public literally in his hands each day.

Anyway, he has been warned by his bosses that they can make life difficult for him, take away his licences, and there have been incidents where he has been set up for a fall, but luckily he has realised what they were trying to do, and avoided the "set up".

Whilst he was off sick, he had to go and see a BUPA doctor (his company made him) - anyway, the doctor (although instructed to carry out the medical bu hubbys company) was very supportive, and said he has seen many examples in the past of workplace bullying, on my husbands last visit, the doctor told him that on the morning of his visit, my hubbys boss had phoned him up and tried to get him to say my hubby was unfit for work, yet the doctor said that he was not going to lie and was pretty angry about it.

Anyway basically whats happened is my hubby returned to work a few months ago and since then the bosses have tried their best to set my husband up, and now they have managed it, they put him in a situation where whatever decision he made would be wrong and now they have suspended him and told him he could be dismissed (although nothing has actually happened)

he has a meeting tomorrow to discover his fate, my question is this, hubby has loads of evidence of bullying, tape recordings of being told they could set him up, reporting him for things when he wasnt even at work and lots of other stuff (sorry to sound vague but I am talking about 7 years of stuff)

would these tape recordings and diaries (hubby has logged his grievances etc) stand up in a tribunal court should it come to the worse senario.

Thanks for any advice you may have.

dmg24

Has your husband not raised a grievance regarding the bullying before now?

spring_chicken

yes he has, when he was off sick, but when he asked what was happening his boss just said "you aren't still going on about that are you" and refused to discuss further, hubby had written a full statement out with the union rep, but it just got brushed under the carpet, he has also logged stuff with a local solicitor

DVardysShadow

Time to get the recordings out and make transcripts.

As for the grievances, has he raised them in writing and has he had written responses?

Googlewhacker

does he not need to have told the employer that he was recording conversations? If it were the other way I would not have thought the employer would be allowed to record the employee without their knowledge.

I am genuinally curious

spring_chicken

yes they were put in writing, but because the grievances were about the bosses, they just said that there was no problem, and it all got brushed aside, hubby has got some right good incriminating stuff on them, if it comes to it, it will blow the lid off a major company, obviously we dont want it to come to that, but we will as it would be in the publics interest. Sorry for being cagey, but obviously it wouldnt be too clever of me to reveal the idientity on a public forum!

thanks for all those who have replied so far x

AnnieG

Hiya
The first thing your husband needs to do is get a copy of the organisation's grievance procedure. He may find that some of the incidents he has documented will be out of time - these procedures have time limits on them, so he'll need to check what is in time and what isn't. However, if the bullying has been by the same person and along the same lines, usually a policy will say that the complaint needs to be made within 3 months of the last incident of bullying / discrimination etc, so as long as you can demonstrate that this situation has been ongoing over an extended period of time, you shold be ok.
What does your husband's union say about the case? You need to be aware that if you get a local solicitor involved, the union is likely to withdraw support for the case - it's also easier for you if you've only got one person working on the case rather than 2, as it can get confising.
Once you've got a copy of the grievance procedure, fill in the proper form and make sure that you send it to the correct person and have enough detail in it... I work in HR and have seen so many grievances that simply say 'this person has discriminated against me because they don't like me' which doesn't give me a lot to work with.
If you need a hand, please PM me, I'm more than happy to help.
Annie

spring_chicken

Googlewhacker wrote: »

does he not need to have told the employer that he was recording conversations? If it were the other way I would not have thought the employer would be allowed to record the employee without their knowledge.

I am genuinally curious

I dont really know, but because my husband was recording as evidence of persecution and not for voyeristic purposes I am wondering if that would be permitted, after all, when you see these "undercover" programmes on tv they tape people all the time to prove the wrong doings.

spring_chicken

Thank you for your helpful advice Annie, I forgot to mention that we were told, that one of the people who had threatened to take my husbands licences off him had been "moved" - so when my husband went back he thought that would have been easier, but unfortunately it was a lie, and the bloke is still there, although angrier than ever cos my husband made a complaint about him, since hubby went back from sick leave he has had various things done to him, things like getting a warning for things (but they were on days when he wasnt even at work) and other petty attempts at tripping him up, the last attempt (which has caused the suspension and the possible sacking) was literally "created" so that he would do "wrong" whatever he chose to do, the thing is, in order to do this, another person would have been responsible,yet no charges have been made towards him, which I really dont understand, as I said, its all a bit of a mess!

DVardysShadow

spring_chicken wrote: »

I dont really know, but because my husband was recording as evidence of persecution and not for voyeristic purposes I am wondering if that would be permitted, after all, when you see these "undercover" programmes on tv they tape people all the time to prove the wrong doings.

Good written records of the conversation are enough.

Some people come out with some partially true wet behind the ears stuff like "you can't take recordings...". But no one can object to written notes of conversations. So use written notes of conversations.

AnnieG

It sounds as though no proper procedures have been followed by the company, which is a good thing from your perspective (at this point, I'm not saying that your husband has had an easy time, far from it). Get a proper chronology of everything that has happened, and as I said, the grievance procedure. You'll need to be able to evidence the things like him not being at work on the day when incidents he is accused of have happened, so get all your papers out and sort them into date order.

Don't let them get away with this, it's not on.