Taking my ex employer to a tribunal

xoid

yvonne13 wrote: »

From the thread that you posted about getting sacked. Oh yes I forgot you begged admin to remove it because people told you that you were in the wrong for swearing at your boss. Now stop hijacking this thread.

A 'Neutral' statement?

discat11

Some ones in a hole here and digging fast.....and it ain't Yvonne BTW.

It isn't non neutral to state facts -IF people told you you were wrong in that thread then she's quoting a fact.

Being neutral in a thread is to come to it in the 1st instance with an open mind being prepared to read the OP and trying not to make a judgement until it's clear to you where the issue lies and who is responsible/partially responsible.

I.e. Making a statement such as everyone who makes points/answers queries on an employment issues are a) employers or b)on the employers side -that is definitely not neutral.


BTW I think that statement is crap frankly, having been both for many years what is an employer and what is an employee anyway?
Unless you are a single owner of a business employing staff I can't see how you can be one and not the other anyway.

Perhaps what you meant was that most are making judgments biased to the management side -maybe they are & just maybe that's helpful since all too often an OP seems an ill advised rant of woe is me following an disciplinary that is in most cases I've seen deserved at least in part.

Surely it's better for an OP to get told the plain facts and the viewpoint that may be seen rather than a lot of fake hugs and sympathy and !!!! poor advice because of it.

RuthnJasper

xoid wrote: »

A 'Neutral' statement?

Xoid, I am sorry for whatever happened to you, but please don't allow your experiences to provoke you into making angry or misleading posts. Most especially where the OP, by their own admission, is in a vulnerable situation.

tripled

amyjaj wrote: »

That is exactly what I am saying. The person that has said I called a manager a !!!!! and a lesbian had her son sacked by this manager.

This would mean surely mean this person would have a grudge against the manager and not you. In which case it does not support your case she is making up allegations about you and is irrelevant.

She also knew that this manager sexually harassed me. She even told me that it was sexual harassment what this manager was doing. So she would say something nasty about this manager and use it on me.

I still don't follow why someone who has a grudge against this manager would make allegations against you. Again this does not seem relevant. The only things that could be relevant are 1) She witnessed the harassment and is prepared to go to the tribunal and support you or 2) You reported the harassment as per the company grievance procedure and the process was not followed.

There was no witness on her part to back this accusation up.

I'll come back to this...

As I have said I am bisexual, lesbianism is part of bisexuality. If I had been asked to expand on this accusation in my appeal hearing, I would have told them, this. In fact I started to tell the manager in the appeal hearing why this person would say this, they didn't want to listen.

Your sexuality doesn't seem relevant. It's a variation of the "friend argument", but applying it to yourself instead. I'm not surprised they weren't interested.

This other person, Who said I was waving my arm around in an aggressive manner when I had the phone to my ear in my only good hand. This is a visually a blatantly obvious lie of which the manager in the investigation accepted despite knowing I only have the use of one arm.

Your statement here is "This allegation is untrue because I was holding my phone in my good arm and my other arm is unusable. I provided medical evidence to my employer in support of my condition but it was not taken into account". Nothing to do with lies or anything else.

Also saying that I was ranting and raving to a member of canteen staff, then not taking a statement to back this accusation up, neither was there a witness on her part to back up what she said. This is all relevant this is what they based my dismissal on. And from the statements it was he says she says. They've all got together to make up their story's.

Again I'll come back to this...

This person that said I called this manager a !!!!! and and lesbian, has told someone Who 4 months earlier I mentioned that I had a hospital appointment two days before Christmas because of the epilepsy investigations, so that it was sorted on the Rosta, then they've gone and said I didn't plan on working the Christmas period. They use that in the investigation even though it wasn't true and it's four months to late to report it!

Did it form part of the grounds for your dismissal? If not it is irrelevant even if it was part of the investigation. If it did, you will be able to provide the appropriate evidence (appointment letters or medical records) to demonstrate that you were off for a genuine reason.

Returning to these allegations... several different people have made allegations regarding your conduct. There may not be witnesses to each incident, but we are still not talking about one allegation, but several from different people. It also appears you have some previous form in this. Accordingly, the company have carried out an investigation and, at the end of the process, decided to terminate your employment.

Your job is to demonstrate that the process was flawed. In this case you said they they didn't make reasonable adjustments for your disability. This meant you weren't able to defend yourself properly against the allegations and the wrong conclusion was reached as a result. You will need to demonstrate that you made the company aware of your conditions and requested the adjustments. You may also need to provide your version of events for these incidents. You need to state facts and provide any evidence.

Do not engage in slander ("so and so is lying"), conjecture ("it was a funny look") or gossip/hearsay. Stick to relevant facts.

I'd strongly suggest you see if there is some form of support worker who can help you with your case. You mentioned you have autism, which might make you feel that things should be a "certain way", but unfortunately things are seldom that back and white. A support worker could sit down with you, work through things and help you prepare your argument.

amyjaj

xoid wrote: »

Amy, it may be all too late now, but could you get hold of any CCTV 'evidence' - regarding the alleged arm waving? As you mention 'tills' so I assume your workplace was in retail? Please forgive me if I am wrong but if this conversation was caught on camera it would help your case.

Keep fighting this, you have more stamina than they do. You may not have thought this at the time, but
be thankful that you are no longer with these bunch of idiots, they all seem to hate their jobs and their life.

You're now out of that dreadful working environment, rejoice!

Thank you for your kind words and monks the nastiness in this thread. There was no CCTV footage as This all supposedly took place in the staff canteen. The company have even admitted that this was exaggerated.

With the tribunal service let a claimant know if the respondent has asked for an extension of time?

sangie595

amyjaj wrote: »

Thank you for your kind words and monks the nastiness in this thread. There was no CCTV footage as This all supposedly took place in the staff canteen. The company have even admitted that this was exaggerated.

With the tribunal service let a claimant know if the respondent has asked for an extension of time?

There has been no nastiness - the fact that you think that not agreeing with you is nastiness indicates a problem. You aren't listening to advice you asked for.

At the top of this page you are warned that anybody can post. Have you considered why it is that one person with almost no posting history is telling you something entirely different than everyone else? Because you need to.

Yes you will be told about an extension of time request - but it isn't unusual for such requests to come in and be granted even AFTER the deadline. You can't count your chickens. Assuming this is a large-ish employer, and assuming they have made no effort whatsoever to settle, you can guarantee that they will fight this. They will have all the resources to do so, and they will be able to manipulate the system easily.

And just to dispel the myths that some people allude to. I am not an employer. I am a trades union official. And I am well used to preparing evidence for tribunals and representing members. So I know very well what goes on in them. Others here have vast professional experience or personal experience of tribunal systems or HR. You have had an awful lot of good advice on this thread. Be cautious of accepting poor advice based solely on the fact someone agrees with you or says nice things. A lot of people have given you the same advice. Nobody has told you to give up. Pretty much everyone has told you that the way you are presenting your case and the arguments you are putting will lose you the case because they are not relevant and the tribunal won't listen to them any more than your employer did. That is because we know that tribunals operate to rules about what they can take account of. No amount of gossip and hearsay from you about managers and motives will get you any credit at a tribunal. It will actually work against you.

You need a "clean" case that is ONLY about whether the process was conducted properly, and whether the decision was reasonable for the employer to take. And in the second of these, that is a very weak point for you because it would certainly be reasonable to dismiss if the employer believed the allegations (which they clearly do) and there is more than one witness to more than one incident.

FBaby

Some people here (me included) can be abrupt in their response, but that doesn't mean they are being nasty, and certainly not that they are wrong.

OP, in a very kind way, your issue is that you lack understanding and knowledge of the legal system. You believe (like many) that the system is there to punish those who have done wrong and reward those who have suffered from it. That's not what the legal system is in place for because it can't make judgments on moral standards.

What the legal system does is ensure that rules have been followed appropriately. For you to be able to 'win' your case, you'll have to 'prove' that your company didn't. That includes those rules that apply to employment laws, and to a lesser degree, but still relevant, lacking to have followed their internal procedures.

The problem in your case as you have described it here is that you don't seem able to present your case in a logical way that supports failure with the above. I expect this is because doing so is very complex, so don't beat yourself up for it, but also because you don't understand the system. For instance, you say:

They had a duty of care to me and they failed miserably

This is not fully correct. They have a duty of care in that if you raise a concern AND an EXPLICIT need for adjustment, supported by their OH, they have to TAKE IT INTO CONSIDERATION. They have a requirement to do risk assessments, but only relevant to safety.

In your case, they might have known your condition, but you couldn't expect to deduct from this what needs you had to allow you to carry out your duties safely. You might have a case that they didn't do a risk assessment in the way it is written in their policy, or maybe not.

The best way to help yourself is to do the following:
- get yourself legal representation and allow them to do their job, ie. focus on replying to their questions rather than telling them what to do.
- try to see if you can gather any internal policies relevant to your situation
-sticking to facts (and only to facts) try to write a chronological summary of issues that have arisen, leave out any emotional aspects. Stick to the date, what happened, what didn't happen and let your legal representative decide what is/isn't relevant.