Employment Tribunal - Preliminary Hearing Advice Required

[Yorkat]

Hi
I raised a tribunal case based on disability and at a pre hearing have been asked to give more specific details and show what each of the issues I raised are linked to in the Equality Act. I think I'm ok with the main ones but a two or three of the smaller ones /one offs I'm not so sure about. They are listed below and any thoughts would be appreciated on if they can be included and if so what against. I consider myself to have a mental health disability and come under the Equality Act. Again I have been asked to provide a statement covering that and I think all that was requested is in and complies with the definition in the Equality Act.

1. I raised a polite challenge . The manager rang me. I struggled with the call . They wanted to have a more detailed call the following day. I explained that I had been stressed by that call and for my health would prefer written responses to the questions I had asked. I tried this two or three times but they insisted. I ended up with a call lasting over 90 minutes and my wife who was upstairs when the call began became so concerned she came down to see if I was ok.

2. Having previously been off with depression I was continuing my challenge but had been back at work several weeks. In the week to ten days leading up to a phone call from my line manager I was covering for a colleague who was on leave (basically doing 2 people's work), pointing out an issue with a system to a higher level colleague and finding and solving the problem (not my role) and being Pro active in telecoms and being the first to respond when the team letter asked the team for their thoughts on something. A small commendation about me was even sentto my line manager shortly before he rang me and he admitted he had seen it. When he rang the first thing he said was ,was I fit to be at work. This question continued and got more aggressive until I answered it. I felt this was purely down to the ongoing challenge I was making and my mental health condition and based on what work I was doing around that time shouldn't have been asked.

3. In another what are described as weekly catch-ups we were a few minutes into the call when he clearly didn't like something I had said and in an agressive tone said that a posting I had responded to on an internal forum regarding mental health had been seen by HR and they considered that it could be seen as bringing the business into disrepute and that formal action could be taken against me. Again I feel this was possibly handled this way because of my ongoing challenge which by this time had resulted in several relationship breakdowns and a mediation meeting to try and resolve it.

[ULA]

Can you let us know whether this is related to your previous thread of the same title. If so i will need to merge the threads as is it not easy for us to respond if there is relevant information across multiple threads.

Many thanks

[Yorkat]

Hi
its the same case although the latest posting is the only advice I'm looking for now

[ULA]

Thank you for your response. I will confine my post purely to what you have detailed on this thread in post #1.

1. My understanding of what you have said it that you had asked some questions of your emloyer which they wanted to deal with by responding to you during a telephone call. This was a stressful situation for you so you asked them to respond by email/in writing. Since I do not know the nature or context of the questions it is difficult for me to provide a definitive response. However you may be able to argue that this was a case of the employer not making a reasonable adjustment i.e communicating the answers in writing rather than by phone to minimise the stress of the situation on you. This would be Section 20 of the Act.

2&3 given what you have stated and without real context I am not sure what part of the EA they would apply to. From my perspective it demonstrates the relationship between you and your line manager was not seemingly very good (which is not unheard of in employment settings) however, in my view, you would need to be able to show that this was directly attributable to your disability.