Disciplinary action

unfairdismissal

Thanks to parliament (one would have said God but I am an almost atheist) that laws in this country are not made by people like ILW , heretolearn and Emmzzi.
On 19th I refused work around 10.30. Had meeting with manager at 11. Manager and team lead discussed but did not give any clear and direct instructions. There are no notes available for that meeting. asked to leave office at 11.30 (end of meeting) and come back next day at 11. Next day meeting (20th) it was discussed again and 60 mins in the meeting I said I will do the task but manager refused saying I don't want you grudgingly work on it. and suspended me.


I am not lazy. It was just a bad day. I had done tremendous amount of work in past between apr and sept last year. as much as 4 times better than next best person.

my colleague is not manager. he is just kind of organiser (scrum master) in team who as per scrum methodology is not supposed to assign work to others. search on google - "scrum master assign tasks".

any way update is - today I had hearing for loss of trust and confidence but was adjourned. now next week appeal for first hearing outcome and result of second hearing will happen. just a delaying tactic may be. suspended for more than a month now.

DevCoder

Since you wont give details on what it was you refused to do and what your remit is then no one can say whether their actions are unfair.

But yes, in the IT sector, if you have refused to do work and then begrudgingly agree to do it then I wouldn't want you doing that work. Hardly going to put a 100% effort into it.

And "scrum managers" are there to distribute tasks, they get appointed that role because they can effectively deliver tasks from their resources.

If the job they asked you to do didn't fall outside the "anything else management see fit" then there is no real reason to say you wont do it.

unfairdismissal

task is called PL Unit which is insert data in different tables and execute the code which is yet to be written and then check the output in different tables whether it is correct. if not correct then kind of flash error. once code is written then run this PL unit to test the code.
Trouble is I joined this project in feb and wrote much bigger and complex pieces of codes (100s of lines) and we never wrote PL Unit in our sub-team for this and may more code changes. I was asked to write one on first day on 4th feb. but we got in same situation as now and i left office on 5th afternoon because of stress and didn't come on 6th. I complained to my ex-manager (who has since left org'n) that scrum master is trying to put unnecessary pressure on me. work was taken away from me and was given to someone else (say X) who never completed it. After that i did a gr8 job. X himself had told me few times that he doesn't like working on PL Unit, and no one likes it. Scrum master has mentioned during the disciplinary process that people try to avoid this task and it is difficult to start but easy to finish.

The code change for current issue was just one line code change done by X and
product owner who is authority in scrum has mentioned on 15th March in Jira that the likelihood of this issue happening in production is nil and suggested to close this issue. I was on annual leave during the week of 15th March. This task of PL Unit should be decided during scrum planning but I can't see this task in Jira. It just came out of mind of scrum master who wants to harass me. Not only he asked me to work on this task but also told to finish by end of day of 18th March. There are many inconsistencies in what scrum master is saying like a) he says contractors do not work on PL Unit as they are brought for specific task. But managers accepted that contractors do work on such task. b) he first asked me how much time it will take. I said 2 days and later said it will take much longer. But he never asked me this instead asked me to finish by EOD of 18th.

Anyway current status is they have not found it to be gross misconduct but misconduct as I did accept to work on this task on 20th and issued me final written warning which I have appealed. But now they are probing breakdown in trust and confidence issue. This falls in SOSR category. EAT has warned employers against dismissing employees without fair reasons.

Scrum prevents Scrum master from assigning tasks and providing estimates for others. A simple search on google will show that most of the links discuss this issue and in most of them it mentions that Scrum master is not a project manager and he should not be assigning the tasks. MSE not allowing me links.

hcb42

unfairdismissal wrote: »

I tried to stress that he has no authority to instruct me. But they say that he has because of role he is playing in project.

I was given instruction on 18th March which I started working on but was not able to focus and I said same day that I hate this task and can it be done other way or give me 2 more days for this. On 19th I told colleague that I can't do it. Same day there was a meeting with my manager and manager asked me to go home and come next day. He got HR involved in that meeting on 20th. At end of discussion I said I will work on that task. But he said I can't let you work on it grudgingly and suspended me from work.

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I think your behaviour has been unreasonable.

you have been allocated a task, and the employer feels you are not doing it, or following their reasonable work instructions (regardless of whether YOU think this individual can issue work instructions).

Ultimately you have to be able to work as part of a team and you have resisted this.

If I was the employer, I would not be backing down to a CA, as they have not been unreasonable based on what you tell us here.. Either get your head in gear and save your job, or you might have to prepare for a day in court.

DevCoder

The point of PL/Unit though is to ensure that no software change shortcomings is biased due to test results and pass / fail factors being adopted after the code is written.

With a PL/Unit approach it is a simple pass / fail with no "oh we hadn't noticed that but we can compensate so lets pass it" factor.

Did you ask why the task was not in the JIRA system, Im not a big fan of JIRA as its not very user friendly in my opinion but all tasks, issues, risks etc should be logged there.

Team managers or scrum managers are different, some allow large blocks of code changes to happen with little or no PL/Unit or change control and others will insist on such for even 1 line of code. Just because its thought that such a change might not have any bearing on production or that the chances of it happening is small doesn't mean it can't happen.

In the end, with programming, you have to do as the team leader or manager asks, they have their own methodology which is what they use to put constraints and governance over their project management.

Nothing you've written so far indicates to me that it was an unreasonable request, an annoying one maybe depending on your approach to coding but not unreasonable.

dktreesea

ILW wrote: »

As an employee, it is not your decision whether you do a particular task or not if you are instructed to do something. I would want someone out if they had your attitude.

I thought as an employee they can only require you to do the tasks specifically stated in your job description or employment contract if you have one?

elsien

That'll be the "any other duties" catch-all clause. Covers a multitude of sins.

agrinnall

I remember having someone working for me who insisted on coding his own way and not following the standards laid down by the organisation. While his way worked it made it very difficult for anyone coming along later trying to maintain or debug his code. I just could not get him to see the bigger picture, and to be honest if I'd been able to I would have terminated his contract rather then let him stay on. In the end I moved elsewhere for a while and when I returned he was gone, for which I was very grateful.

unfairdismissal

can someone here put more light from legal aspects/nuances instead of throwing their opinions of natural justice? many times what you think is logical may not be logical from legal point of view. that is why employers are ready to pay double for contractors whom they can get rid of easily. people are ignoring that even if I said no initially I did agree to work on the task later...19th 10.30 am i refused in email, 11.30 i was asked to go home and come 11am next day..at 12 I said I will do it..it is just 2-3 working hours!!

is it that easy to get someone out on just perceived lack of trust..

i won't mind going to court...employer is more to lose by going to court..but i don't want to go that route...some sort of compromise will help..

Pricivius

When considering a claim for Unfair Dismissal, the Tribunal must look at whether the employer's decision was within the band of reasonable responses. Not whether it was reasonable and not whether the Tribunal would have done the same thing, crucially.

As the employer hasn't dismissed you yet, it's not possible to apply the above test to your situation as the reason for dismissal is unknown.

What's standing out for me is that you seem to be continuing to deny that you have done anything wrong. Your employer clearly considers that you were given a reasonable instructions which you refused to comply with, yet you continue to dispute this on what appear to be spurious grounds. If your employer asks you to do something which you are capable of doing, trained to do and is within the general scope of the work you do, you will have some difficulty convincing a Tribunal that this was an unreasonable instruction. You may not agree with what they ask you to do, you may have a preferred method of doing it which they have specifically asked you not to use or you simply do not like doing it, but they pay your wages and it is up to them how things are done. For example, I was once given a spreadsheet and a task which could be programmed and tested 2 hours to provide what they needed. They refused to allow me to record the macro and insisted the individual formulae were each programmed by hand. It took two days, but I did it because that's what I was asked to do. It made no sense and wasted my time and their money, but that's their prerogative.

The fact that you are refusing to acknowledge any misconduct is the problem now and if you continue with this approach, I don't know what you expect your employer to do. You simply do not get to choose the what and how of your job to the extent that you think you do.