Hi all Im looking for a bit of advice regarding a friends daughter shes only 18 and she has been working for M&S money call centre but has just been sacked for gross misconduct. She was called into her line managers office yesterday then escorted to her desk to empty it,then off the premises all of which took place in front of all her co-workers The gross misconduct they have accused her of is criticising her own bank HSBC , on twitter, for refusing to extend her overdraft.... Now i know M&S money are owned by HSBC but surely this cant be right she was showing her displeasure at her own personal banks decision not the company she works for. As far as i know there is no mention of who she works for on her twitter account so no way of anyone who does not know her linking her to HSBC so i cannot see how this could effect their business Does anyone know if she can fight this as i think there is something wrong about this? Thanks in advance for any replies

Wondered if anyone could help with this. An employee of a company worked for 12 years, two days a week, 4 hours per day. Turned up for work last week and was told to go home as she had been replaced by someone that would do her job for the minimum wage. She had no disciplinary's, no absence, no warning she was about to lose her job. Any advice, is an IT1 the only way forward.

Hi, My husband was sacked for theft on the 1st October 2012 without any proof or police involvement, he was not even questioned by the police. He filled in an ET1 form and was given a hearing date for today 31st May 2013. His ex employers solicitor ordered a pre hearing review saying his claim was 34 days out of time. My husband tried to argue that he had appealed internally and did not receive his appeal letter until the 3rd of November which would have made his claim in time but the judge refused to hear his case anyway. Please tell us what if anything he can do now? We don't even believe any money went missing at all, it took 2 weeks for them to mention anything about the missing money (£119.52), and used the fact that he got his dates and times mixed up as cause for reasonable doubt. Like i said before there has been no police involvement at all. Despite this my husband has been branded a thief and their staff have been stopping my neighbors in the street to discuss my case. I had a legal aid solicitor who was not very good but I did not get a solicitor until after I had been given a hearing date. I filled in all the forms my self and was not fully aware of the procedure, I believed contacting ACAS was the start of the tribunal process. I feel like I am having to suffer all this as I do not have the money to pay for a decent solicitor. Please help...

In yet another humiliating court defeat for Iain Duncan Smith, thousands of sacked Jobcentre staff may be entitled to compensation due to an employment tribunal ruling that they were unlawfully sacked. Story http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/jobcentre-illegally-sacked-thousands-of-workers/ As the article states I wonder if IDS will attempt to retrospectively change the law on this one.

Hi I work for a social care company. I have worked with them for 12 months as casual agency staff where I just took the hours they gave me, no work = no pay, no sick pay etc. In February my father died and I had to take care off his affairs, I was off work for 4 weeks. On my return to work they offered me a 6 month set term part time contract (classed as a probationary contract) which I have signed and the HR manager signed, this was due to start in a couple of week while I continued to work on the agency side. 2 days ago I fell at home and broke my ankle and am in plaster estimated to be off 6-8 weeks. I am not entitled to sick pay from work and presume I have to go down the DWP route, However, I am worried that they may see me as a liability and will want to withdraw the contract, sort of sack me before I start so to speak. Can anyone tell me the legalities of this please. Also I would be grateful for any info regarding sick pay entitlement from DWP and support for paying rent over the 6-8 week period. I am living with my unemployed partner who lost his JSA when I started work so I have been responsible for all household bills etc. Many thanks

Hello, We currently have a conundrum in our household and would really appreciate some advice. My partner has worked for a certain company for over 5 years now but his contact did not specify particular hours in it, only that he would work a set number of hours per week. My partner is also my carer and before now, this was fine. He would generally work 6am - 2:30pm (in reality until 4:30/5pm as he put a lot of his own, unpaid hours into that place out of conscientiousness). This has been the same since I met him (1.5 years ago) and now that he lives with me, the regular pattern is good as one of my conditions cannot allow me to have a changing shift pattern - it would be highly detrimental to my health and put me at greater risk for things such as heart disease and stroke. As he does the cooking and housework and helps out with medications, shopping and accompanying me on outside ventures, he has been amazing. The problem has now arisen with his workplace moving him to a different location and drastically changing his hours so that he has, for example, worked from 7am-3pm today but they want him to work 3pm to 11pm tomorrow night! He was not informed that the new store had these sort of hours and as soon as he was informed, he put in an official request for flexible working hours - saying that he could be available from 6am until 4pm (5pm in reality for him) but they have refused it and allowed him to be given this shift tomorrow, which they all know is impossible because being a carer is not just a whim and I would not be able to function properly and my health would be jeopardised if he agreed to this. He is thinking of going in at 8am tomorrow, to attempt to work a shift until 4pm, armed with a grievance letter but even with citing 'Customs and Practice' and working so hard for them all these years, I can't see how we can move forward from this because his original contract doesn't have the set hours in it. They don't even need him to be there tomorrow so I suspect they are doing this just to be able to use 'Performance Management' on him and eventually get rid of him that way. This is so unfair on him and I feel terrible that he is being forced to choose between my health and his job. They say they offered him alternatives but they did not - they all had the changing hours in or were a permanent nightshift, meaning that I would have to be in a permanent night shift pattern to and would not be able to attend any of my medical appointments etc! To make matters worse, they originally insisted on having a meeting with him to discuss his request on the day of an important hospital appointment that he had said he needed to take me to - they were fully aware that that was his day off to do that! Even the rearranged appointment meant spending several hours in work on another of his days off. I guess our main question is this: Should he hand in his resignation and if so, should we put anything like 'Frustration of Contract'/'Unfair Dismissal'/'Constructive Dismissal' as our reason for this or should we wait for him to be sacked after loads of disciplinaries for being unable to work their latest hours? Also, how might this affect his entitlement to benefits such as Jobseekers? Sorry this is so long. Thank you for reading this and please advise if you can. All help is greatly appreciated!

My employers are soon to be terminating my employment on grounds of ill health. I have been claiming ESA since SSP ran out. How does it work once they sack me.....does the ESA stop and I claim JSA but send sick notes to job centre???

So been at my job for 6 years... Perhaps I should of known better. Retail shop where the company seems not to care. Even with customers complaints are never dealt with. People are bitchy, managers get away with anything (from calling friends and family off work phones, having multiple 1 hour cigarettes whilst they talk to friends, using cctv to spy on staff and have digs at them for not working correctly) Personally I have had many issues with the manager. She has had digs at me and other staff members, says horrible things but to some extent is clever about is, she does it in a way she can twist it round and blame the staff member. Of course whenever I bought it up with her, nobody sided with me, she bought up past incidences and it ended up not being dealt with, Funnily enough shes always said "Sometimes us management do get tired and perhaps we snap too much, but come to us and tell us if we do". Then when we do they reverse it round on us and never apologise. So onto this perhaps sackable incident. I became really good friends with this worker there, we hung around together outside work, had laughs and enjoyed eachothers company. On facebook 1 day they were in a real down mood about work. The manager was away on a weeks holiday and the deputy was accusing us of doing no work. To put it simply... she was a bitch. She phoned the manager, said we were not working when we had worked really hard. Rather than ask us the manager wrote a note to us all, put it on staff board saying she doesnt need this, and cleverly worded a few things to have multiple meanings... Although in general she was calling us all lazy. Stupidly without thinking me and this person from work were having an open conversation on our facebook walls about it. We both got carried away, I was saying how horrible the manager is and how we get in trouble weather we worked or not. I disagreed with a few of their policys, said head office are clueless and keep losing money, then force us to work twice as hard to make the excess up. Also I called the company a name which is similar to their name but with some words changed around to degrade them. The other person said different things but the whole gist of it was the same as what I put. My wall was not allowed to be viewed publicly... But the person whos wall was written on had it viewable by anyone... They did not know this. So today, 1 of the managers family had seen the comments. Printed them all off and each of us were sent in the office for a massive interview by the manager (it was just me and the manager present for my interview, and just the manager and other staff member present for theirs). The interview questions were unfairly written by the manager. Nobody witnessed. I didnt even get to read through the whole facebook printed off comment sheet so I had forgotten half I said. Most of the questions were yes/no answers and I was put on the spot to answer them. I couldnt think of what to say to half of them, with many being irrelevant to the situation. After I left, myself and the other staff member realised the manager had hidden any evidence we could use against her, the notes saying we were lazy, the note threatening us all saying someone from head office was down and is disgusted with the store (When we worked hard) when they hadnt even been down. Half of what I mentioned on facebook about the manager was denied by her in the office, although the other staff member and 1 other staff member knows its true and would actually back me up. I dont know what to do... Prepare for the sack?

Hi cut a long story short i applied for job back in October,got the job at the interview.but i had to wait for forms to come through,forms which i had to send proof of my identity,so I done this but never heard from my manager,,I assumed they did not want me,,this was 2 months on i did send letters and made calls to my manager but never got a response back,..now in February i got a letter saying i will be disciplined for not reporting to work,bare in mind this is 3 months on,so when letter come i rang head office and played hell with them telling them,i have took the right steps to make contact with my store manager but i have heard nothing,,response was sorry about this ignore letter your manager will be in touch..now again 1 month on and i never heard anything,next min i get a letter saying they dont need me no more am sacked. so basically what my question is can i be sacked if i haven't actually done any work

Hi, I hope that someone can offer me some advice. I am facing dismissal from work for viewing pornographic material in works time. I am currently suspended, and have not yet been disciplined. Although I have been informed verbally that a letter will be dispatch soon starting formal disciplinary proceedings. It started when a workmate was witnessed watching porn during works time on his company issued laptop. He was working alone on the day in question and no one else from the department was present. As part of the investigation the company suspended all 4 members of our department, leaving just the supervisor, and took all 4 laptops for investigation. The workmate was dealt with very swiftly, within the first week, and agreed to resign. After three weeks of investigations the company has informed me of its findings. These are; · Excess internet use · Having inappropriate images · Searching for porn using Google images. My explanations are as follows · Most of the systems used in our department are web based and my internet connection is running virtually all day. I often leave my laptop unattended whilst attending shop floor callouts, from anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour. During this time other people may have access to the laptop. My logon is sometimes used be others on different machines to allow them to use web based software. · On 20/12/10 I received a personnel email via Gmail to my private online email account which contained a PowerPoint presentation from a friend outside of the company. I opened the mail not aware of its contents as the email was headed, “Seasons Greetings Just click on the numbers”. The first slide in the presentation was an advent calendar which showed a cartoon of Father Christmas crashing his sledge. I assumed that the rest of the calendar would follow a similar content, i.e. funny Christmas cartoons. However, when I clicked on a date an inappropriate picture was revealed. I immediately deleted the presentation from the hard drive of the computer. I assumed that by deleting the presentation that I had removed all traces of it, as I had no wish to view, retain or distribute it further. · This is the one that I’m not sure about. They claim that they can tell that I was deliberately searching for pornographic images. I am certain that I didn’t but how can I prove it? They claim that by using Google images and running a mouse over an image that that image will be stored on my hard drive. I have used Google image search, but not for porn. Sorry for the long post. Having read some of the others posted here I believe someone will have some positive replies. Thanks for reading this and I look forward to your response.

Hi, I took out a loan of £350 but just a couple of days later I was sacked from work. I had been on sick pay and may have been fired unfairly, however the fact remains that my circumstances have changed and I now have no income source. The reason I had been signed off of work by my doctor was due to stress so I am anxious as to what Wonga may say. I have tried emailing and phoning them but emails are not replied to and the phone is not answered. If anybody can provide any help it would be much appreciated, thanks. EDIT: Sorry, forgot to say, the amount I owe is just under £500; the loan itself was £350. Thanks.

Hello, this is my first visit to the CAG and I am hoping for some advice. To cut a very long story short I injured my back at work in April 2006. Government employer would not support it was an injury at work even though went through all the right channels. Carried on working, taking sick when I was in so much pain I couldn't walk. Placed on sickness monitoring twice, had occupational health referrals, placed on final written warning in November last year. Had to take 2 days off in March and was told by line manager she had sent report to big cheese moving for dismissal on capability grounds (due to sickness not the quality of my work when at work) and I would hear in a couple of weeks..... then nothing. Basically referred to Occ Health again in August who say my back condition falls under scope of DDA. Wont bored you with the ensuing situation but would like experiences/advice/thoughts on the fact that the DDA effectively kicks in after 12 months (am paraphrasing, I know there is more to it). As it was clear from my sick absences that this was an ongoing condition should my employer have recognised this earlier, should the occ health advisers have known/mentioned it? It is vaguely alluded to as a 'grey area' but nothing really explicit is asked for or mentioned in the reports. Sorry, that was waffly - basically should my employer have been considering it applying once my condition had gone past 12 months. Phewww, hope that makes sense! Hx