Poor treatment from employer

[Guest]

Hi I’m in the process of going through a grievance with my employer for failure to pay money to me following a promotion and also for failure to give clarity and no formal notification that the job I was promoted to isn’t now going to happen.

My boss has done all she can to help but she’s new to the company and this stems back to before her time.

However things have suddenly turned sour.

We’ve got 2 new starters in the team, both have worked with my boss and have followed her to our organisation. As to be expected there’s that familiarity/clique.

One seemed down to earth liked a laugh/joke and I though he and I got on very well. I’m not the best at jokes but you know I try to join in office banter. This new chap came in at a time where I was trying to come up with fundraising ideas for our in house charity and I made some joke about waxing his legs. He laughed about it so I never thought there’d be a problem.

It it would appear some 5/6 weeks down the line whilst I was off sick on one day he’s gone to my boss and her boss and complained about me. In addition he’s also complained that he’s seen me leaning in very close to a colleague and smelling his aftershave - this is a long-standing joke this colleague and I have.

Upon returning to the office I was taken into an office for an informal chat where I was told that I had been acting inappropriately they referred to the above points and caused a colleague to feel uncomfortable. I explained it was only light hearted banter I’d never meant for it to be taken any other way I apologised and said I’d never do it again. I was then told from now on to watch what I say and do because anything else and they would be taking me to a formal hearing.

I thought this was a joke clearly it isn’t. Since then my boss seems to avoid me she and the colleague who spoke to her go off for drinks together I was coming through a door the other day they were coming towards me as soon as they saw me they stopped talking and their facial expressions changed.

Ive now had my grievance hearing for next week they’ve put a manager from my team in it to chair it I thought they couldn’t do that. This all seems to be very petty behaviour but it’s getting me down I feel low and I feel this is cruel.

[efpom]

I am going to approach this on the basis of a claim to an Employment Tribunal.

I now make a plea to all those seeking advice on this forum. Do please try to set out all of the facts, in chronological order as best you can, when writing out your story. It's a counsel of perfection and none of us are perfect and is not intended as a criticism - but It really does help when trying to apply the law to the facts.

There are two issues - waxing legs and smelling aftershave is one issue, but that is now dealt with, so it's no longer live.

The second issue, is an upcoming in house hearing of your grievance.

You have a complaint, to the effect that because the chair of that meeting is one of your managers, there is an appearance of bias. Porter v McGill, is the leading case on that and you would have a claim, to the effect that the hearing was biased against you,

The second issue is unpaid wages.

The third issue is that the post you were promoted to has now disappeared.

I am unable to make out from your writing whether the facts are that you were promised a new post at higher wages, but that post disappeared before you started to work in that new post.

If the post disappeared before you started to work in that new post, your claim for unpaid wages falls away. You could not succeed in a claim based on that.

If you did do work in that post, then you do have a claim for unpaid wages and may well have an entitlement to continue to be remunerated at that level, even if you are then redployed to another post, that normally would be remunerated at a lower rate.

But see https://www.xperthr.co.uk/faq/if-an-...t-level/61436/

Your claim for not receiving clarity or proper notice of the disappearance of the post cannot succeed as a claim before an Employment Tribunal, unless you are made redundant because of that disappearance, and the proper procedures for that were not followed.