management role taken away then let go - no warning

[CB1]

This may be a long post but it's a long story & I feel a few people may be interested to hear it so please persevere! I started working for a company a few years back & quickly applied for a management role. After an interview process I was given the role and promised all the support/Training that I required. All good so far!


Over the following couple of years the so called "support & Training I required" wasn't forthcoming but I carried on regardless, learning as I went. During this time I never once had a review with my boss to find out what I was doing well/not so well, Where I could improve etc. needless to say my pay or job role never changed.

This year our company moved to a new premises, More rent, more machinery (all financed) so the bills kept rising also adding new services at the same time (all of which NO employee had any experience of carrying out). Before Christmas he said that we would have a sit down once settled in the new place & discuss a pay rise as he felt I deserved it. When the date of the move was finalised it was agreed that we couldn't accept customer jobs between specific dates.

My boss decided to have a sale where the customer paid a reduced rate for the work on the understanding that they wouldn't send the work until after a certain date. The whole move was badly mis-managed by my boss who flatly refused to offer out the work on the building to trades people as they "wouldn't do it to my standards" doing all the work himself. Obviously with all of this going on work started to back up so i offered to TEMPORARILY hand over the responsibility to my boss of managing the staff so that I could 'muck in', to which he agreed.

THIS IS THE GOOD PART, a few weeks later my boss pulled me to one side & told me that a fellow employee had told him that he would like to run the workshop. You guessed it (or did you?) HE AGREED! stating that, in his exact words " at the old place you were making good progress but since we've been here you haven't managed the workshop very well! The ****ing cheek! (excuse my language but i'm a little irate by this point) Please bear in mind that I never once had a pay rise when I tell you this, he told me that the guy who would be running the workshop would be carrying out a "watered down version" of my role as he'd only be good at certain aspects of the job.

I found out a couple of days later that he was giving him a pay rise by way of a bonus for doing the job!! I obviously told him that he didn't support me in the role & I wasn't happy about the situation. I'm going to make the ending as short as possible, the last week was quite stressful for obvious reasons and it ended with me overhearing him say to another employee (after pacing around all day on his phone) "There is a way round it something to do with a lack of mechanical knowledge". two minutes later he pulled me in the office & told me he was letting me go as he couldn't afford me on a managers wage when I'm not managing. and I wasn't as quick as the other technicians.

In summary after almost 3 years working my arse off for the company my boss literally stole my role from me, watered it down & gave it to someone else on higher pay & then dropped me as i am not as quick in a role that I had no experience in, only offered to help in. I really want to make him see the error of his ways but don't really know how to go about it.

Any ideas? thanks in advance

[mariefab]

Well, there's good potential for an unfair dismissal claim at an Employment Tribunal in there ^ if you have the stomach for it. (It's a stressful, technical and tedious process, but doable and we'll help you.)
It'll need some serious re-wording but you've got the bare bones of it.

He may not know it yet but he did you a favour by sacking you because, if you'd quit, you'd have been left with a constructive dismissal claim where the burden of proof is on you rather than him and they are so much harder to win.

I don't suppose you've got any of this in writing? Texts, email discussions? In particular anything about the temporary nature of your offer to 'muck in'?
While things are fresh in your mind jot down the dates (or approximate dates) of the various events and what was said by each party on those occasions as best as you can remember.

When you've done that post it up here so that we can get a better idea of the timescales involved here because this ^ reads as if it mostly happened in the last couple of weeks. (Although I do appreciate that it's most likely to be because you understandably needed to have a bit of a rant right now.)

[CB1]

thank you for the reply MARIEFAB,

Unfortunately I don't have anything in writing.

On the day of the first conversation with my boss he gathered everyone in the office to announce the plan & it was made clear to everyone present that this was a temporary solution to an immediate problem.

This really did all happen in a short space of time.

timeline of events;

early Aug - offered to step down on a temporary basis - staff informed.

3rd of Sept - informed of my job being given to colleague.

6th Sept - Lost my job. & was told that I could continue to work for a week or 2 until I found something else as "This decision is none of your fault but a necessity to save money"

He also told me that as i wasn't managing, my wages were too high for a non-management role and he legally wasn't able to lower my pay so cutting me loose was the only option.

Thanks again

[mariefab]

Well, I really wasn't expecting that it actually happened that quickly. That makes your employer look even worse.
After almost three years of loyal service, you kindly offer to help him resolve a problem he's created, he responds soon after by replacing you then sacking you on ridiculous grounds.
No process, no formal (or informal) disciplinary hearing, no appeal etc.!

"This decision is none of your fault but a necessity to save money"
That's a description of a redundancy. If there had been a genuine redundancy situation and a proper process was followed it's hard to imagine how you could have been made redundant.

I think you may have missed a bit from before 3rd August.
Surely your Boss was also aware that, because he chose to do it himself rather than use sub-contractors, the work was backing up.
Did he express any concern about the work backing up to you?
If so, did this prompt you to make your offer to muck in temporarily?
Or, did you alert him to the backlog and, without any suggestions from him, offer to muck in on your own initiative.

It's not terribly important whichever way it went, but presenting the background gives a clearer picture of the circumstances leading to your offer of temporary assistance.

P.S.How close to 3 complete years service were you when you left?

[CB1]

My boss was aware yes as he was there every day. He knew the cause of all the issues & it wasn't down to a lack of effort. He also acknowledges that he made mistakes with the move & subsequent works.After a few months of struggling to keep up I spoke to him & suggested taking on a temp to do the less skilled/more time consuming jobs to push work through quicker without compromising on quality, his reply was that he couldn't afford any more staff. Fair enough, so how do we move forward? This was the point that I made my offer. His suggestion a couple of weeks after this was a run of 6 x 12 hour shifts, whatever start/finish times were committed to must be worked. I was the only staff member to do the hours that I committed to (this was the week prior to my redundancy). It's also worth noting that, quite regularly during my employment money was tight & I would offer to wait for my pay, sometimes up to a week after payday just so others didn't have to, including this months pay which was due on the 1st but was dripped into my account a few hundred quid at a time. The more I remember, the more I feel aggrieved to be honest

[CB1]

Sorry I din't answer your last question. It was actually 2 years & 8 months I was there