THANKS....not suspended for internet/email misuse

peter999

the_prophet wrote:

I think they have asked the IT company to dig around as you have sugggested and come up with evidence to suspend us. I would imagine that both the terminals that we used have continued to be used purely from the fact that the last access time is 19th February and we would have been suspended for nearly 3 weeks.

All the accusations & information should be put in writing including names of people who have compiled the data.

Whoever has gathered the computer data or made comments on what it indicates should sign a report & expect to be held accountable in a Court of Law.

peter999

Fran

Bossyboots wrote:

What a load of hokum. Of course there are man-in-the-street employment experts out there. These days most solicitors specialise in one field of work or perhaps two that are linked in some way rather than the old days of a jack of all trades. There are constantly courses being run to update them on matters and a certain amount of these are compulsory. I think it far more unlikely that the CAB will have sufficient knowledge of this than a solicitor practising employment law.

Many CABx have employment specialists, check with your local bureau. In any case any CAB advisor will have access to a lot of employment information and can also refer to specialist advice.

Have you contacted ACAS?

the_prophet

many thanks for all the information it is so much appreciated

the_prophet

Hi Fran, yes there is a good booklet on the site thanks

CFC

the_prophet wrote:

As far as the emails go this is still something I do not understand. When our managers would come down to the office they would sit at the free terminal (usually mine as I work part-time) and do something that would then put all their own settings onto that terminal. Likewise I could go and work from another office and punch into the address bar WWW. something/exchange/and then my own name... and this would then get me into my email and database. What would sometimes happen is that when I went onto 'my' terminal after they had been on, I would click on the email icon and their emails would automatically come up, I have inadvertenly clicked on the odd email as it was impossible to tell whose email it was... I even remeber last summer the first time it happened and I actually phoned the IT company and said I couldn't get into my stuff because my managers stuff was on the PC. They then told me how to log it out and get back into mine. But the company are saying that this is not how the emails have been accessed and they have taken these times into consideration. They have said that whilst I was at my terminal I have dropped down the address bar and put in WWW.something/exchange/managers name..... which would have got me into their system and of course the password is all the same. Now whilst i admit how ridiculously easy this would be to do, I swear I have never done it. From the original accusation of 42 times I was supposed to have done this, they are now saying it is 11 times of which I was not in the office 5 of those times, I might be able to explain away a further three.... however it would be going on the basis of switched on the computer and their stuff was already there.... and I cannot explain 3 occassions other than toilet, making tea etc.... photocopying.

The accusation I was given at the suspension meeting that I deleted my history on the 20th January so that even the IT company were impressed has not been mentioned and there were some sites that I know I have accessed the week before that I can see the evidence of. If anyone has got to the end of this post I thank you so much for reading it and I would buy you a beer if I could!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for the internet use, what is your companies' policy on using the internet? Is it strictly work related use only? What does the letter inviting you to a hearing say about this?

A stand you could consider on this that you accessed a few sites, not on a regular basis, and that you are aware that you are not the only person who has done this, because a)the cookies b) your manager has a paypal and ebay account and you have seen him/her using it - therefore you assumed (rightly or wrongly) that limited personal use was acceptable. You are therefore not being treated fairly and consistently if a disciplinary outcome was unfavourable to you, compared to your manager. (and if you want to be really sneaky, you mention you feel it is discrimination on the grounds of age/sex/colour/sexual orientation - delete as applicable. Unless they are 100% certain of their ground, that will see them running!)

As to the subject of emails, recall the conversation and if you possibly can, the rough date of your call to the IT company. Further to that, ask them if the evidence is foolproof that it was you that accessed it. Listen to their answer, and then say you do not believe the evidence is foolproof, as on 5 of the 11 occasions you were not actually in the office. List the dates in the meeting. Raise concerns at that point that their audit trail is unsatisfactory and that you have never accessed the manager's email deliberately. Point being that if you weren't even in the office on those dates, how can you, or they, rely on the other IT evidence as being correct in any detail, no matter what is said? You would not be being treated fairly if they gave an outcome that went against you when the evidence has been shown to be untrustworthy.

Now, if the company has a strict password policy and you have allowed other people to use your password, and the logins to the manager's email has been by someone using your password, then honestly you are sunk, because the company is offering you a way to protect yourself via your password and you haven't used it. You are therefore as guilty as the person who has done it in your name.(if these logons were done after the new password policy came in) If of course it was done before the new password policy came in, why do they think it was you, when it could have been any single person who worked in the office who used what is a common workstation and password.

I hope this is of some help to you. It's very difficult to give detailed advice because you'd have to write an essay to give us the 'whole picture'. All I can do is give pointers towards things you can think about, same with other posters.

At the end of the day, remember that you have the right of appeal, it it doesn't go OK at the first hearing you will be able to appeal and at that point I think it will all be clearer to you as you will know exactly what they are saying that you did and how you did it. So don't please don't panic.

Even an appeal is not the end of the story if you have been employed there for 1yr or more as you could potentially take your employer to a Tribunal for Unfair Dismissal if necessary. (not guaranteeing that you'd win, of course, merely saying that there are other avenues if you do feel that the outcome is unfair and that you have been 'fitted up'.)

As to not being a member of a union, you could still call them for advice and join up - lots of people only join a union when things go wrong.

Bossyboots - you may think that my opinion is hokum, all I can say is that I've had the pleasure of being a representative at a disciplinary hearing for a solicitor's practice employee, and the hearing panel fell apart with no clue of proper process or actually what they could give warnings about and what they couldn't, and they had to back down ultra fast when I mentioned I was making notes of X Y and Z for the appeal (and pointed out the ACAS guidelines to them and how they were breaking them), so I can only say we must agree to differ in opinion. You may get reasonable or good advice employment law advice from a high st. solicitor, but if you ask me the chances are slim.

Bossyboots

CFC wrote:

You may get reasonable or good advice employment law advice from a high st. solicitor, but if you ask me the chances are slim.

Perhaps we are just lucky in our area then because we have three firms whose employment specialists are highly regarded and successful. You would definitely get better advice than you would at our CAB whose staff either genuinely don't know the difference between family, civil, employment and criminal matters or simply don't care enough to ensure that people get the right advice from the right people.

the_prophet

Dear CfC thankyou for taking time to reply, and to answer your questions
The internet policy has been very vague and bearing in mind I have been permission to check my ebay and yahoo accounts it sort of undermines the policy anyway.
The meeting on monday is called 'a further investigation meeting' and The HR manager and my team leader (who gave the permission, has an ebay account, pay pal and my space account and who was also present when one of the RM's emails was accessed and I wasn't at work) are interviewing me.
We have all used the same password for 10 months. So one password has been used for everyone to access their own emails.
thanks once again for your input

CFC

Hi Prophet, the notes taken at the meeting should be pretty much word for word, and please do NOT sign them unless you are satisfied that the notes are an accurate representation of what was said in the meeting by both sides.

This is very important.

If for any sense-forsaken reason they do not take notes, then make notes yourself of the conversation on both sides and make a note of the fact that they are not making notes.

Also, in case it should all go horribly pear shaped and you need to take it to a tribunal in future, please keep a note of the chain of events while it is fresh in your own mind and record the dates of the events, the names of the managers concerned, and the place of the conversation, even down to the time if you can remember, of everything that they don't appear to have documented. For example,they started by accusing you of doing it 40 odd times, then dropped it to 11 - possibly when you point out that you were not in the office on 5 of those occasions they will drop it to 6...all of this may be of use in the future. Also make notes of the conversation which was not recorded at the time where the HR person said to you that even the IT department were impressed with the way that you'd done it.

the_prophet

CFC I cannot thank you enough for the information you have provided as I have had a possible light bulb moment today because going through the company's policy on computer use procedure (which I have done properly for the first time!!!!) then I would guess that half of the staff at least even including the service director would have to be under some kind of investigation..... the Regional manager and team leader would have to be under investigation for not making their data secure by logging out of the terminal properly.... other collegues would have to be investigated for email misuse Also team leader was present at least once when Regional managers email was accessed. So if everyone is not investigated then surely I am being discriminated against or being treated un equally in some way???? what so you think????? Have taken heed of meeting pointers so cheers for this as well

CFC

You're quite right Prophet, you will be being singled out if other people are doing the same in regards to the interet but are not being investigated for potential disciplinary action.This is a point you should raise on Monday.

Anything that they say that you have done which you are aware that another person has also done, especially done repeatedly and publicly in the past, should be raised. They might well say that it's you that is under investigation here, and not another person, to which you will respond that it is germane to the investigation, because it appears to you that you are being unfairly singled out for different treatment.

I do not think that they will focus on internet misuse (unless we are talking !!!!!! sites!) as once you state that you had permission to access ebay and yahoo, it becomes very difficult for the company to maintain that limited personal use is unacceptable. You've already been given permission for limited personal use really by being allowed by your manager to access those sites, and accessing them with your manager's full awareness. This is another point you should raise. And if the answer is that your manager did not have authorisation to permit you to view those sites your response is that as with anything else, you go to your line manager and abide by what your manager says. They can't retrospectively 'withdraw' his authority to authorise you to do pretty much anything he wants to authorise in the company's name, or say that the company policy on internet use supersedes any permissions a manager can give (unless it already says that in the policy). They can only tell you that in future he does not have authority to permit it.

Re the email business - I cannot see them getting past the fact that the evidence that they are presenting ie you accessed the email on the work terminal on a day you were not physically present. I cannot see any potential response they can make to this one, except to drop the number of times down that they say you have done this. And then it does start to look to me, and I should think to most disinterested observers, that none of their evidence in relation to email access could be relied on to any reasonable extent.