Hey Guys,

I'm looking for some thoughts and maybe some advice on an issue I am currently experiencing at work. I'm unsure is it can be called discrimination but it certainly feels unfair and is really stressing me out at the moment.

I work in a large food production factory. The factory has a high number of Eastern European employees about 25% British 75% Polish, Slavakian, Lithuanian and other.

In the area I work alongside 2 other employees. We all do the same job each at our individual stations and have a chargehand who also runs other sections so only pops in and out throughout the shift.

One of the guys I work alongside is extremely lazy, always unprepared for work and basically does as he pleases but always seems to get away with it. I've also noticed that chargehand and him are always laughing and joking with each other and seem really Friendly.

The guy doesn't follow company procedures when he is doing his job (We cook food in boilers and should do so in standard weights set by the company, he cooks double the amounts so he can have extra time on his paperwork). This makes the guys who we pass the cooked food too work harder as they have to handle double the amount coming out the cooler. The chargehand knows that he does this but doesn't say nothing about it.

He is out for at least 3 cigarette breaks a day sometimes 4. This has really started to irritate me as I am a smoker too but I don't smoke apart from my breaks. I started to get on my chargehands case about it and finally the guy had an investigation as he had been caught 3 times. I'm not sure what happened at the investigation but he's still out smoking just not as much and a bit more sneaky about it.

He takes between 50 minutes to an hour on his teabreaks and the company policy only gives us 28 minutes. The chargehand also knows about this as sometimes he has to cover us on breaks and he still takes 45 minutes. I also spoke to another chargehand who had reported it to the manager. But nothing has been done about it.

He picks and chooses the easiest boiler to work at (Some days we have to manually load food from a pallet on one of the boilers). We had a big order last week and were running 24 hours a day for a week. None of the other guys on my shift do overtime for the company and I had agreed to work 2pm - 2am for 5 days including my days off. I loaded 15 tonne of diced potato over the space of 3 days and the chargehand let me.

There is also sometimes when we are not busy enough one of the boilers stops cooking and the guy who is on that station needs to go into the prep department to work, no one really likes it as it's basically standing cutting or inspecting potatoes and veg and although I don't mind it, I don't see why they can pick and choose and refuse when I don't, surely we should all have our fare share. Also some days only 2 boilers run and I'm always the one getting sent somewhere else to work for the day, it totally annoys me that I work very hard and don't take the **** with breaks or sneaky smokes but I still get left with the ****.

I've been complaining a lot to the chargehand recently and had a few run ins with him about things that he let's people get away with. I'm sure that he's told the guy in question what I've been saying as now he totally ignores me at work which can be quite awkward and now the chargehand is very dry with me. I don't understand why I'm the one that's getting singled out and ignored because I wanted to be treated equally and fairly. We all get paid the same hourly rate so why should he get all the special treatment?

I've got to the stage now where I dread going to work.

Other than raising a formal grievance, not sure what recourse you have, Depends how much more stick you are prepared to risk?

Hi Bazza

Welcome to CAG

It sounds like you've raised issues informally with the supervisor, the supervisor is ignoring the issues you've raised.

As suggested, you could raise a Formal Grievance in writing, listing the issues you've raised with the supervisor. Send it Recorded Delivery to your supervisor's manager and HR.

http://www.acas.org.uk/?articleid=1670