Grievance being delayed and tribunal

ronctlsmile

Dear all, 
I have a work problem and hope you could give me some advice. I put in a formal grievance against my colleagues two months ago. Since then, the HR business partner kept making lame excuses for not finding the right person to mediate my grievance because one of the defendants is quite senior. I clearly have been dragged along by them.
Following my trade union rep's advice, I have asked for an ACAS conciliator for help in my case, but it seems that my employer showed a very strong resilience of speeding up the progress of my grievance. I guess one of the defendants who is senior to me got promoted recently. Has he got more power in his position now and also has been quite looked after by his boss. It seems that I am in a bad state to deal with him and his gang. 

I don't know how to proceed in this case. As the grievance is still pursuing, I am still committing my current workload.

According to the gov.uk, if I do have a case for constructive dismissal, I should leave your job immediately - my employer may argue that, by staying, I accepted the conduct or treatment. It means that if I leave my job now or later, I can't go to the tribunal to ask for compensation using the argument of constructive dismissal. It does concern me a lot. 
My employer is cunning and crafty as hell. They kept delaying the grievance process and asking me of committing all my workload first. I got so annoyed by this.

For the whole one and a half years, I suffered depression due to unfair treatment at work and now I have kept myself waiting until the grievance coming. The feeling of waiting is very dreadful at all. 

I have been contacting citizensadvice.org.uk for free legal advice, but due to COVID-19, I have not got any reply from them. Worse still, due to the redundancy taken place at my work, most of my uni reps got redundant and they seriously do not have time for my case. 

What should I do? Thank you in advance. 

Desperate Soul

Diamandis

What is your plan if the outcome of your grievance isn't what you want? You seem to be pinning everything on it, when if they're promoting the person and they're senior it's probably unlikely the action you expect isn't what will happen. 

JamoLew

You are still entitled to union representation - get onto the area rep if a local one is no longer available

ronctlsmile

Hey Diamandis, I don't know but I will resign if the outcome doesn't go what I want. My real concern is when the first grievance meeting is coming out. My worry is that once I have committed my workload, they will take a longer time to proceed with my grievance because they know I can't take them to the tribunal for the argument of constructive dismissals.  

Thrugelmir

Does the published grievance policy have firm time limits for each stage ?

lincroft1710

What precise outcome are you hoping for from the grievance process? 

ronctlsmile

Dear Thrugelmir, it does. It says the first 14 days after the submission of the grievance for the first investigation. My employer does violate the grievance policy.
Dear Lincroft. I have a list of outcomes set in my formal grievance form. Mainly, my outcome is focusing on lowering my workloads, and HR sends a warning letter to the defendants. I doubt they would agree with my outcomes. 

elsien

If you have been unhappy there for 18 months and feel it is impacting on your health, then grievance notwithstanding, looking for a different job should be given serious consideration. A grievance procedure isn't a magic wand, particularly where one of the people concerned is being promoted. And hanging on where you are unhappy in the hope of potential compensation which you may or may not get further down the line isn't  the best way of going on. 
How does your workload compare with other people at your level in the company? Have you had supervisions and appraisals, and what was the outcome of these in terms of your performance and your concerns? All that is relevant to your grievance. 

lincroft1710

ronctlsmile said:

Dear Lincroft. I have a list of outcomes set in my formal grievance form. Mainly, my outcome is focusing on lowering my workloads, and HR sends a warning letter to the defendants. I doubt they would agree with my outcomes. 

Warning them of what?

Workload is a very subjective matter. Because of the current crisis and the consequential economic disaster, increased workloads should not be unexpected. Even many years prior to this many employers would annually increase workloads.  

ronctlsmile

 Dear elsien, relatively high and this year was unbearable. Since I joined this bloody company eight years ago, I always showed good performance in my appraisals. This year, a new manager (one of my defendants) came in and he started listening to another defendant, who has been bullying me for some time at work, to give unbearable workloads. I went through all the procedures starting from informal consultation, mediation to now a grievance. They have been being very difficult against me. For the first two stages--informal consultation and mediation. The defendant who bullied me refused to take part in the mediation and I have never had an informal consultation with him neither. All he did was passing me to the manager for dealing with me. The manager did not bother working any deals with me and resolve any conflicts that happened in the office. In the first informal consultation, he ordered me to commit all the workload this year rather than solving the problems. Frustrated and I gave up talking to him. Then I went for mediation to resolve our differences. Before the mediation meeting, I asked him to release everyone's workload spreadsheet as proof of fairness to me. He refused. However, according to the departmental workload policy, all the workload spreadsheets must be transparent to members of staff. He lied and accordingly, I refused to go in mediation with him as I know it is no go for me.  In the end, I took the route of asking a grievance instead.  However, things don't go my way. They delayed my grievance processes. 

Dear elsien, yes I am not happy to work at my current company, but money is the subject as I have to feed my family up.

Dear Lincoft, warning of bullying behavior, discrimination against me, and unprofessional mismanagement. 

1.) I wondered if the early conciliation offered by ACAS was very useful in general. Can they pressurize my employer to hold a grievance for me? 
2.) If I commit the workload now up to a point that I can not bear, can I still go for constructive dismissal in the tribunal?

oh_really

The grievance procedure will have timescales for each stage, get acquainted with them and wait for the clock to  tick down then proceed directly to the next stage level. If the steward isn't helping contact the branch secretary and inform of the situation and get them involved.