Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

[lexis200]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Hello again peops (most of you anyway!)

Just a little update on this.

OH is still on leave, but is much much better than he was. Not least because we found out over the weekend that his boss has left the company (reading between the lines, he was pushed after over a third of the office were called in on the back of his complaint and appear to have all corroborated what my husband said). :whoo: arty: :whoo:

It's not all over yet as OH still needs to have a meeting to discuss his return to work, but needless to say we have paid to see a solicitor (it needed more than the free half hour we had initially) and at least know what his rights are and what he should be requesting.

I'll let you know what happens when it's all done and dusted

Thanks everyone who gave genuine advice

xxx

[charitynjw]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Hi lexis200,

Please do come back once it's finally done & dusted, & let us know (if possible) what your brief had to say.

[lexis200]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Will do

[lexis200]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Hello again

I thought I'd do another little update on this as it's been a while but is still ticking on, mainly I think because I seriously need to rant!

I'm going to give a bit of background detail here which I've not done before, so this won't be short. I didn't want to do this before in case it affected OH's situation, but quite honestly there's bugger all they can do now as they've taken everything they can, and I'm not naming anyone so we should be ok!

OH started work at his company late in '08 as an IT contractor. Our good friend is the FC at the company and got him the interview with the IT director, and he was hired on the spot for a 3 month temp contract. After a month, the IT director started asking OH to come on permanently at head office as a senior technician. OH wasn't interested as he ran his own web design company and didn't want to be employed again. He only went for the interview as it was a bit of extra work before Christmas. However, over the next month, the IT director kept on offering more and more money, before eventually hitting a ceiling where he would have had to involve the board to authorise a higher salary. As the budgets for salaries weren't due to be discussed, he instead offered OH a car as a sweetener, which effectively upped his pay by another 4k or so. At this point OH decided to take the job as it would mean that he would have a steady income and wouldn't be working weekends.

Everything was fine to begin with, although OH did notice the IT director (ITD) had a fairly serious Jekyll and Hyde temperament. On one of his first branch visits with ITD, OH witnessed him bring a young female member of staff to tears after she asked him to move her PC. He basically flipped out, asking her if she knew who the hell she was talking to, and to look him up on the intranet. This is an important point - he was not only the ITD, he was also the MD's brother in law. As OH later found out, he was fond of saying that he was 'untouchable' and that he was aware of, and proud of, the way people were scared of him.

I'm not going to go into full detail of everything that happened as this was done for his complaint, and it was 11000 words (that was the version he cut it down to!), with a 3000 word document added which addressed only a wrongful capability he'd been bought up on. I'm guessing that's a bit much for a forum

In a (large) nutshell though, in the 3 1/2 years he was there before going off sick for 6 months, ITD physically bullied him 3 times (one of these assaults was a headlock, which OH didn’t tell me as I’m pretty sure he knew I’d have had the police at the office the next day) and kept a sustained action of mental bullying up. He started this by having a (literal) screaming fit at OH in front of about 1/2 of the office about a parking space. ITD was wrong, which several people said, but he wouldn’t back down, and in the end the FC (who’s room was on the other side of the office) came out telling him he was wrong, and that he was a bully. From there it was a campaign of public belittling and private humiliation and threats. We have absolutely no idea why he started this. OH is very good at his job and is well liked by pretty much everyone there, and as I said, he was fine to begin with. We suspect it's because of OH's relationship with the FC. The FC is in turn very old friends with the FD, and we think the ITD decided for whatever reason that OH and the FC were working to 'get him'. In reality, they barely spoke at work due to ITD's perception of their relationship and the FC not wanting to cause OH any problems. In fact, the FC has said on numerous occasions that he can’t get involved where he normally would with a member of staff because of their friendship, so if anything OH was less looked after that other members of staff. Plus, OH had no interest in taking ITD’s job - far too much stress and the whole reason he took the job was because after his previous jobs this was easy for him and relatively stress free.

It really would take too long to try and explain properly even briefly what has happened. Let’s just say then, it was bad. Really bad. I thought OH was going to have a breakdown when he was signed off. He’d not slept for about 18 months - 4 or 5 hours was a very good night. At the end he was sitting on the bed in the mornings in tears at the thought of another day facing ITD. This is a man who had been a project manager at Ericsson with a team of a dozen or so people under him, and project manager at NATS, managing highly pressured multi million pound projects. He’d run his own company with multi national companies as clients. He’d worked in stock exchanges with brokers telling him that every time they tapped their pencils on their desks meant they’d lost another 10k. He does not get stressed easily. This though was a sustained personal attack over many years.

It culminated with several points in the space of 3/4 months, but the major ones are a capability based on outright lies (which OH proved, but which no-one seemed to give a damn about despite written proof that ITD was simply making things up), member of staff with no managerial experience or idea about the job being promoted above him purely as a kick to him (after over a year on the job he has recently been sent on a ‘how to be a manager’ course as he’s so shocking. He and OH were also very good friends before he was promoted - since being promoted he barely speaks to OH, we think from embarrassment and the fact that he completely threw OH under the bus in his response to OH’s complaint, thinking that ITD would never get kicked out), parking space removed and given to new manager, car removed due to ‘budget cuts’. It came to a head on the last day. I’d been begging OH to see the doctor, but he knew if he did go off with stress ITD wouldn’t pay him (in his words people on stress were a f**king waste of space and he’d fire them on the spot if he could). That day I saw the FC in the car park and was in tears to him. He then found my OH just standing in the toilets, not knowing how he’d got there or why he was there. He told him he should go home but OH said he was ok. The FC then had 3 managers (all from other departments, as OH’s own useless manager couldn’t see how ill he was) come to him asking if OH was ok. At lunchtime the FC told OH he wasn’t fit to be in work and took him home. I called the doctor and the next day, literally within minutes of walking in OH was signed off.

Just as an idea of how bad he looked, we went over to the FC’s house a couple of weeks after he was signed off as I had to get him out of the house because he was shutting down. The FC’s 6 year old daughter, who we’ve known since birth, and who sees OH on a regular basis, asked her mum ‘who is that man?’ She would not have it that the person in front of her was OH as he looked so utterly different.

A complaint was put in after months of persuasion from me, and the result has been the ITD leaving (he was sacked with a butt-load of money for a pay off, but we apparently are stupid enough that we don’t know that and will accept ‘he decided to leave’)

As the complaint was upheld, OH asked for backpay and his car back. No compensation, no nothing, simply ‘please put me back to the position I was in before the actions of a director of this company forced me to have 6 months off’. Two sols, two senior HR people that I know from other companies, and my mum’s ex-barrister friend have said this is the least they would expect them to do.What work’ve told him he can have is 3 1/2 days in lieu which ITD removed from him (another long story). Even this he had to prove as they wouldn’t take his word that it was 3 1/2 days (even though he complained to HR at the time they were taken - but then, seeing as OH's been told they have no notes whatsoever of any of the numerous informal complaints he made this isn't a surprise). Essentially they’re saying ‘we agree our director bullied you, both physically and mentally, for years, so here’s your job back you lucky thing. Now shut up.’

Angry doesn’t quite cover how I feel. We had to use our children’s savings that their Great Grandmother gave them so that we could eat and pay the mortgage; thousands of pounds. I lost my husband completely for those months and nearly ended up in hospital due to the stress (I have a transplant and my immune system is shocking, so stress does funny things to me), and prior to that he’d not been the same for well over a year. The HR manager appears to be a complete robot without a shred of empathy, as in her words the company has acted fairly and fulfilled it’s legal obligations. That was her reaction to being told OH was saddened that no-one had even seen fit to apologise for their director’s behaviour. Well that’s ok then, I’ll let my kids know that it’s alright that their savings have gone and their home life was wrecked, because daddy’s company have followed the letter of the law.

So, that’s where we are. OH is about to hand in a letter to the HR director asking them to reconsider again, and if that fails we’ll be trotting back to the solicitor to get them to put their thoughts into a letter.

On the very good side, OH is almost back to the man I knew years ago, and is willing to push on this which means his state of mind is getting back to normal!

Rant over. Sorry for the length of it, but that’s been building up for some time. If it’s any consolation my head feels a bit better for getting that off my chest

[Inca]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Oh Lexi......what an awful experience to go through..I obviously can't comment on any of the work/legalities side but I can on the 'mental health' bit because I have (and still have) lots of experience of it.
The bravest thing you and your man did was to walk into that Drs surgery and say 'help me'
So many people are afraid of the stigma of 'depression'.....nobody gets 'depressed',,people like you and me we 'cope'..........when in reality we don't.....we wander aimlessly around searching for the 'balls' we know we have but just can't find them.
My scenario? Found huddled in a corner,,knife in my hand,babbling inanely,refusing to talk/listen,,actions of a mad woman,,needing sedating,sectioning,dangerous.
My reality..My Mum had died 3 months before and I had barely eaten,slept or talked about it until my brain finally said 'enough'..so I went and sat in the cupboard under my stairs with the knife I was peeling spuds with and didn't realise I was still holding lol.My GP was called and she came and sat with me (after relieving me of said spud peeler)
I needed help and she gave me it........I'll always need help but I cope with things now...I should imagine your OH felt the same way I did......my mind hurt and my brain ached
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[MarkExell]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Check out www.employment-solicitors.co.uk they normally have solicitors listed all over the UK and I understand they tend to hand pick the practices they use.

Cheers

Mark

[lexis200]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Thanks for the link Mark, I'll have a look

Inca, that's awful, I'm so sorry. I think the sleep is the killer there - it certainly was a huge issue with OH. You just can't function when your brain can't rest, and it doesn't take long before it starts taking a huge toll on you mentally and physically. And you're right, there is a huge stigma attached to depression, I think particularly with men. One of the saddest things was when, at the second appt we had, OH told the doctor he felt like he'd failed because he couldn't deal with it on his own. Still makes me teary now.

I've never been around someone with depression before, and I have to admit, whilst I've never been in the 'pull yourself together' camp, I've not realised how bad it was (kind of like thinking Parkinsons is just shaking, until my lovely dad got it). I now have the utmost sympathy for anyone who's gone through it, and their families.

I'll update if anything further happens, but I'm not holding my breath!

[lexis200]

Re: Can anyone recommend a good employment solicitor in the Worthing/Brighton area?

Well, OH sent a very considered non-emotional letter to the HR director asking simply to be put back to the position he was in before he was forced to leave. Her response? She told him they had hope he would have dropped it by now (yes really), and then went on to say that he 'may have prolonged his illness' by not speaking to HR earlier. Yes, she honestly is now trying to suggest that my clinically depressed husband, who I could barely get to talk to me, eat, sleep etc, would have been back at work sooner had he had a meeting with HR. Never mind the fact that I had to instigate every fricking meeting/email/phone call because they didn't once contact me/him to find out how he was. Never mind the fact that in the two meetings we had with them, they were pretty much just repeating the phrase 'we want to facilitate your return to work' whilst not actually doing a damn thing to action that. Never mind that the Occupational Health meeting that OH should have had almost immediately was not done until he'd been off for FIVE MONTHS. Never mind the fact that meeting with HR would not have altered the fact he was never going to be able to go back to work whilst they were still employing that odious cretin of a director.

Words can not convey what I think of this woman for that sentence. The worst thing is that she knows my husband. He's not some anonymous employee, she sees and speaks to him most days. She (at his request) phoned him at home in December last year because things had got so bad, and he told her pretty much everything. After the FC took him home, he went up and had a two hour meeting with her detailing exactly what he knew was going on. I understand that HR have to work for the company, but they still have a duty of care to employees, and they have failed spectacularly.

Family company my bum.