If there’s one thing I’ve learnt as a legal secretary it’s that, on paper, things aren’t always as they seem.
Employment claims, obviously, involve work conflicts. The worst ones (usually the ones about bullying or harassment) are the ones where the bully and the employer pretend there was no conflict at all. Bullies often claim their relationship with the accuser was 100% conflict free; that the Claimant has another agenda.
Under pressure, the employer or guilty boss/colleague will go to such lengths to prove they’ve been set up that the whole thing becomes bizarre. They’ll allege things like “After our innocent chat about the weather, the Claimant started to cry and complain of harassment! She’s obviously after money!”
I heard this hundreds of times at my old firm. “We didn’t do anything. So and so is suing us because she’s a money grabbing *****”.
Weirdly, people buy this. But here’s the newsflash. The majority of people walk away with a settlement ranging from one to two month’s wages. Considering they’ve probably walked out of their job months before and have a solicitor to pay – they’re probably stacking up debts that one or two month’s pay isn’t going to touch. They know they won’t get much - but something is better than nothing when you've been bullied out of employment.
We all know the real security is keeping the job you’ve got - more so when you have a family, a mortgage to pay and bills coming in.
So when an employer or one of its employees says, “I didn’t do anything – he/she was trying to maliciously extort money from the firm” – it’s only a matter of time before the thing they didn’t do happens again to somebody else.
Best wishes
BBTB x
Sunday, 10 October 2010
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4 comments:
The bullying 'Umbrella' is countless, I was waiting at a bus stop the other day after work (in peak hour)there was around 100 people, through observation virtually 99% of all of these people had a stress look on their face, I would imagine this had some thing to do with their work, perhaps exposed to nit-picking, undermining, overulling, ignoring, exculution, isolation, lack of support & communication and being pushed to maximise the profits. Were is the love of communication these days? I once heard a saying, "nice guys finish last" which is probably true but is not moral for the good of justice. x
And the problem is, of course, recession makes things worse.
Employers are in the mindset of 'I can get 30 other people to do your job if you don't want it.'
It's a rare and creditable employer these days who makes staff welfare a priority.
Instead of punishing the offender, HR find the easy way (so they think)to blame the victim. Most of the time they succeed especially when the victim feels so defeated with no outside support.
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