Invited to a disciplinary

[PallasAthena]

For the alleged incident of 12 months ago:

1. Were you notified of the allegation at the time?
2. Were you interviewed about it and given the opportunity to respond to the allegation at the time?
3. Did your employer take statements from the person making the allegation and from any witnesses at the time?

If the answer to 3 is 'No' are they interviewing the accuser/witnesses now?

I can't give an answer about the law but if I were were on a discipinary panel hearing the allegation (as I have been many times as a school governor) I would be very unlikely to allow the employer to use as evidence a 12 month old allegation that had not been investigated and therefore was unsubstantiated.

[ULA]

I am not aware of any employment law provision as to when an allegations "is out of time" for the purposes of conducting a disciplinary hearing.

However my view would be, from dealing with this situation many times over the years, that 12 months since an incident occurred is too far back to be able to either try to take disciplinary action about it now or include it with a more recent allegation, particularly if it was not investigated at the time.

[NoPaddle]

For the alleged incident of 12 months ago:

1. Were you notified of the allegation at the time?
2. Were you interviewed about it and given the opportunity to respond to the allegation at the time?
3. Did your employer take statements from the person making the allegation and from any witnesses at the time?

If the answer to 3 is 'No' are they interviewing the accuser/witnesses now?

I can't give an answer about the law but if I were were on a discipinary panel hearing the allegation (as I have been many times as a school governor) I would be very unlikely to allow the employer to use as evidence a 12 month old allegation that had not been investigated and therefore was unsubstantiated.

The answer to the three questions is 'No'. But no allegations were ever made about the issue. It was just a small group of staff sending emails to each other regarding a concern about me, but not actually stating what the concern was. It was only at this recent investigation I was told there was a concern 12 months ago and told what it was.

The answer to the next question is also 'No'. The investigator has now sent me copies of emails from 12 months ago. But none of those who sent the emails have been interviewed now.

[PallasAthena]

In which case I hope your union rep is robust and forthright in telling them that this evidence is inadmissable.

[NoPaddle]

In which case I hope your union rep is robust and forthright in telling them that this evidence is inadmissable.

The rep did try to get it removed but the college refused saying they intend to rely on it when making a decision.

[NoPaddle]

OK. So disciplinary done. I'll find out next week even though policy says within 24 hours. I did inform them at beginning that the hearing was being conducted in breach of employment law, even cited the case law, they didnt care and carried on regardless. Now I wait

[Presonus]

I can't really give you legal advice beyond my musings - I wish you luck with what sounds like an awful and on the face of it quite biased/badly run process.

Obviously you don't want them to 'prove' their allegations but any idea what an ideal outcome would be, it sounds quite toxic and incompetent environment even if dropped.

With regards to pushing forward - you'd be amazed what a company will do even with a full front view of being wrong. Let me use my own situation as an example, I raised a greivance with a director - he ignored me initially and I had to prompt him via social media to get a response (policy says a response should be back in 7 days), but that's not even the story - when I got into the meeting I was recorded, I said okay as long as I got a copy myself. A few days later i got told there was a technical error sending me it due to the file size, then a few days later I got asked permission for the recording to be deleted because recording meetings was not permitted in company policy.

I argued but as I'd transcribed it myself I eventually relented, then came for the formal disciplinary with another director - again a request to be recorded so I politely explained the policy and that we'd done all this before, they didn't care, recorded me anyway and when I requested a copy of it - for the second time received a request for consent for it to be deleted as it shouldn't have been made.

The company I work for is - big. Own legal, HR, management advice departments etc.

I also raised a conflict of interest issue regarding the investigation into me, because erm, the manager in question running it had already sent me emails to the effect of he felt I was better not part of the company (on other issues), I had raised concerns to him regarding issues that led up to the allegation and he'd conciously not acted and so forth - basically he was very much a part of it. I raised these concerns before the investigation got going, i repeated them during the investigation and I have repeated it many many times after I was told the investigation had concluded. I have been told this concern is being considered, but the investigation was allowed to continue from start to conclusion which was months ago in full knowledge of these concerns (a decision btw is still pending, you're having to wait till next week, I've been waiting for an outcome of the formal disciplinary meeting for 6 MONTHS. Yep, no meetings since then, still discussing it I beleive.

I don't want to hijakc your thread, but trust me - when you say a company is willing to do absolutely the wrong thing in full knowledge it's the wrong thing - I DO beleive it.

I hope it goes well, but remember - this doesn't have to be the end of it esp. if you're perm employee and >2 years of service.

[NoPaddle]

After a 10 year clean record, I got sacked because a student who had been there just a few days complained that I called her a retard, Then after that was dealt with by my line manager and nothing came of it, her mum then complained that I called another student a retard. The same student was interviewed over that complaint and backed up her mum. The student's friend who was sat next to her backed her up. But no other students from the class were interviewed, not even the student who i allegedly called a retard. They did remove the second issue regarding training from last year, but still didn't care that the hearing was held in breach of employment law. Got 9 days to appeal the decision. Just waiting for my union to get back to me because I know this will end up going to tribunal.

[atticus]

You really need your union's help.

[NoPaddle]

Union proving to be useless at minute. I put the appeal in without their help. It is to be heard next week. I appealed on 10 grounds. The first ground was breach of employment laws, and I cited the 4 that they breached and how they were breached. Grounds 2 to 10 just give more examples of how their actions breached those 4 employment laws. The thing I find strange is that the appeal invite letter wants me to expand on all the grounds. I cant put things any clearer, they breached employment law and I gave them multiple examples.

How do I expand on grounds which themselves already expand on grounds? Its like their asking me to prove that the proof is proof.

[ULA]

I am sorry to hear about the lack of response from the union in assisting you.

I understand your frustration at being asked to provide the same information again. Maybe I can suggest a new way to present the information which may make things more focused.

I suggest a table with 3 columns headed as follpws;

1. What is the breach
2. What employment law has been breached (and provide the legislation information and include details of the section of the law)
3. When these took place (detail each incident of the breach the date, approximate time and who carried out the breach.)

This effectively creates what is known as a list of issues in the event this was to proceed beyond the current process.

[NoPaddle]

My appeal was today. I'll be told the outcome in a few days.

A few things about this appeal:
1) The person who heard the disciplinary and dismissed me knew exactly when and where the appeal was going to be held, and just turned up.
2) She was not on the list of people who I was told in the appeal invite letter were going to be there.
3) She made comments throughout the hearing, some contradicting things I said, and she even asked me questions, some of which my union rep had to step in and tell her were irrelevant to the appeal.
4) The person hearing the appeal was clearly phased by her being there.
5) Part of an email from a student was read out during the appeal hearing. They had this email prior to disciplinary hearing and never disclosed it despite me asking prior to the disciplinary hearing for all evidence. They never disclosed it with the appeal invite letter either. Only part of the email was read out so I have no idea what else it said. The part read out wasnt damaging to my case, in fact confirmed something I had already stated.
6) There was a break prior to summing up the appeal when me and my rep left the room and we could hear them all talking. We couldnt make out what they were saying but we could make out the different voices and the one who dismissed me was doing most of the talking.
7) My rep informed me during our break, unofficially, that he had been told the exact reason I had been dismissed, which was because the person who dismissed me claimed I didn't show enough remorse. How was I supposed to show remorse for something I didn't do, and for something they failed to prove.

There you have it.

[PallasAthena]

What does your college's disciplinary policy say about the appeal procedure? In my experience in schools the person who dismissed you is always there because it is their decision that you are appealing against and they need to explain and justify their decision to the appeal panel.

Point 6 is a serious breach of fair procedure as the person who dismissed you was allowed to make representations to the appeal panel that were not disclosed to you and that you were given no opportunity to respond to.

[NoPaddle]

It wasn't an appeal panel. It was just one person supposed to hear the appeal. The Disciplinary Policy states that an appeal will be heard by the College Principal and a member of the Human Resources team will facilitate proceedings and take notes. They were both there. I was there, and I was allowed my rep there. That's 4 people who should have been in the room. But we had a 5th person who was not mentioned anywhere as being there.

[PallasAthena]

Fingers crossed your appeal is successful but if not the most serious failure in my opinion is 6 for the reason I said.