freedom to speak up experience

lincroft1710

tostaky said:

. I dont want to work in a place where people are not respected.

That's going to limit your opportunities!

Judging by the many threads on the subject on this board, there are plenty of employers who do not respect their employees nor treat them well

Savvy_Sue

tostaky said:

Thank you all for your replies - i appreciate the discussion and can see the different points of view.
i am not in an union. 

It never ceases to astonish me when people working in some situations do not join a union - ANYONE who deals with the public, but ESPECIALLY in a health, welfare or education setting!

You mention that you are a trainee in a clinical role. 

If a patient or a colleague makes a complaint about you - justified or not - you want to have someone on your side. Your employer / placement provider is NOT on your side. Their first step should be to investigate, impartially, and that may mean suspending you, requiring you to stay at home and instructing you NOT to speak to your colleagues. Can you imagine how lonely that can make you feel? 

The next stage may be a meeting, at which you are entitled to be accompanied by a colleague or a trade union rep. So that's a choice between a colleague who has no idea what's been going on (because you haven't been able to speak to any of them) or a TU rep who understands the disciplinary process and how it works. 

Use this to find the right union for you: https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-a-union

Or speak to colleagues in your field, or look out for posters in your department. 

Certainly in my union, fees are based on income, and they offer a £10 a year membership to students and apprentices. I've done quite a few free training courses with them too, so I find it well worthwhile. 

Savvy_Sue

lincroft1710 said:

tostaky said:

. I dont want to work in a place where people are not respected.

That's going to limit your opportunities!

Judging by the many threads on the subject on this board, there are plenty of employers who do not respect their employees nor treat them well

And the trouble is, you never know how a place will be until you're there, and even after you've been there a while things can change! 

diystarter7

Savvy_Sue said:

lincroft1710 said:

tostaky said:

. I dont want to work in a place where people are not respected.

That's going to limit your opportunities!

Judging by the many threads on the subject on this board, there are plenty of employers who do not respect their employees nor treat them well

And the trouble is, you never know how a place will be until you're there, and even after you've been there a while things can change! 

And change they do. When my manager left that was on the interview pannel when I go the job and the new manager came in and was controlled by the office clique, things began to change. In the past, the manager had robustly defended me against malicious claims by some nasty clients and equally nasty co-workers.

Foolishly, I was not in a union as I felt secure with the manager and a few friends there but gradually things go worse and the manager left. It was when i was bullied/etc more and more so i joined a union and one of the gang was picked on and they cam my friends that we and another couple of people eventually got the ball rolling. We were lucky that the union rep was good and fair as well as the personnel manager who often supports senior workers

@ that was making other people ill and go on sick leave and then the same people were bullied whilst on sick leave, the bully started going on sick-leave.  They got the taste of their own medicine. I worked in a very toxic environment thanks to weak management.

At times you have to leave buy I've never had to but came close many times and the only thing that stopped me from leaving was, I loved the job, had see nice mates there and it was a few min's drive from home so !!!!!! should i leave because of these paristes was my saviour - importantly and this sounds like bragging, I was damn good at my work but came close to a breakdown when walking on eggshells when my work was unnecessarily and unfairly scrutinised  without justification. 

I could never prove it but in the back of my mind was that there was an element of racism and I was asked about this but as I had no evidence, soild evidence I did not claim racism but there were clear hints of this when they so-called joked and talked about news items but not enough there to prove.

Yes, join a union but I guess you can do what I did, join one when you need them.

[Deleted User]

If it were me, I would report it to HR. 

This reminds me of this quote:

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing."

Purplelady65

I work in the NHS and the manager’s behaviour you have described is unacceptable. This manager has publicly humiliated a member of staff and also threatened them with unnecessary disciplinary action. You could contact the Freedom to Speak Up Guardian and report what you have witnessed or alternatively find out who the Senior HR Business Partner is for the service and report it to them. The fact there are a room full of witnesses will make any fact find a straightforward exercise. If employees don’t call out bad behaviour then unfortunately nothing will change. Sadly not everyone feels they can do this but the fact you have posted here and that you are feeling uncomfortable about the situation indicates that if you don’t speak up now you may regret it later. 

Dakta

Personally I would report it, the behaviour is unacceptable and sometimes the reason nothing changes is because noone in the right place is aware.

I had a manager not so long back who actually had one of the contractors duties set almost exclusively  to monitor us, look for mistakes etc and our weekly meetings were a public rundown of each our week failings with jibes of who wants to cry next etc. Nobody would stop you making a mistake, but it'd be logged for you to be called out on each week and you'd go in not knowing what you'd be called out on, but there would always be something.  It got reported anonymously using our whistleblowing helpline and upper management started attending our meetings and the manager ceased to be shortly after - however it went on for a surprisingly long term before someone did.

Dakta

Yeah it does, management need the ability to be authoritarian but it shouldn't be the default style - surprisingly in thus case it didn't cause that much turnover though it should have done  - i think it was the team were mostly contractors so easily replaceable if they complained.

Savvy_Sue

diystarter7 said:

Yes, join a union but I guess you can do what I did, join one when you need them.

High risk strategy. Union won't always support immediately. You may not be in a position to wait to be eligible for their help.

diystarter7

Savvy_Sue said:

diystarter7 said:

Yes, join a union but I guess you can do what I did, join one when you need them.

High risk strategy. Union won't always support immediately. You may not be in a position to wait to be eligible for their help.

It is but it worked for me but in hindsight, I see your point. However, with rocketing food/feul etc prices paying  15/20  quid a month for something one may not use has to be considered a few times before joining.