Urgent Help Appeal against formal wriiten warning

[crafterman]

Hi there I would appreciate advise on my current situation. On the first week of September I was informed by HR that the disciplinary investigation had been invoked regarding an alleged incident 10 weeks earlier and this was the first I had heard of it. The alleged incident was described as me calling an employee of a significant external partner “arrogant” or may have used the term as part of a question. No complaint was received from the person only from colleagues who have other issues with me. The investigation went to a disciplinary hearing at which they had decided that this had happened and I was given a formal written warning for 12 months. One week before the disciplinary hearing I was suspended on full pay regarding another alleged incident which is now at the investigation stage. If I am found guilty of the second incident there is the possibility of dismissal. At the investigation meeting for the first incident the evidence provided was two written, signed and dated statements. One statement was from an attendee at the event my line manager and the other witness statement was from my line managers line manager, who did not attend or witness the alleged incident, however four emails from attendees were also provided to accompany the second statement. There were 16 attendees in total The originators of the four emails were not interviewed by the investigating officer. I have discovered today that the acceptable IT user policy of my company clearly does not allow emails of this type to be generated. I have read about the Data Protection Act and I get the impression that emails with confidential information regarding me as an identifiable person without my explicit permission are against the Data Protection Act. I consider that in following the company procedure the HR dept have allowed employees to break the law namely DPA and broken company Acceptable IT user policy. Please if you can advise it would be very much appreciated. My line manager’s statement hides a health and safety issue with a false story. The company disciplinary procedure put the onus on line managers to deal with incident immediately which he failed to do (because there was not the alleged incident). I have a deadline of a few more days to submit an appeal. Urgent Help Appeal against formal wriiten warning

[maroondevo52]

Firstly, don't panic. You have 14 days to appeal against the decision made from the date you received the outcome letter. I need some further information from you before I can advise you accordingly. Can you tell me in full detail what the first disciplinary was for. Did you get to see the statements and if so, did you state at the disciplinary that certain ones were untrue. Did the employee you said something to raise a grievance? Did he submit a statement.

 

Also, can you tell me in detail what you were suspended for? I cannot advise until I have all the details in full.

 

Regards

 

 

Scott

[dx100uk]

calling an employee of a significant external partner “arrogant” or may have used the term as part of a question............

 

employees are not 'mutes' that just do what their employers say.

 

any union or anyone skilled in industrial relations will put this down to an acceptable working relationship type issue & fight your corner.

 

this sounds like a case of 'well they don't want you and are just looking for an excuse to rid themselves of you' situation and, be it of your own making or akin to the above, as scott has suggested, we need more info as i feel there is more to this situation than meets the eye.

 

as a cold outsider, with scant info, my suggestion would be to approach them direct and negotiate some kind of 'mutual tactical withdrawal' - nice handshake & good reference & move on to another co.

 

dx100uk

[cal37]

Check your own disciplinary policy, there is no set time limit for an appeal laid down in the law, all that a company must do is have an appeal policy.

However Acas code of conduct on appeals recommends five working days as usually appropriate and in my experience this is the normal time limits used.

[crafterman]

Thank you for your responses. The deadline for my right to appeal is tomorrow and I submitted it on Tuesday. I basically said i disagreed with the findings of the disciplinary hearing and that my line manager chose not to say anythign to me during the two day event neither did other line managers there and the matter was only raised 10 weeks later. I did mention that the response was out of proportion to the alleged incident and if requested I could provide details of other breaches of the company code of conduct which were not pursued through a disciplinary procedure. The Union have been excellent and sifted a lot of rubbish that i was going to say but I realise would be ignored. The appeal hearing is next wednesday and im not sure which way it will go. If i lose the appeal the worse that can happen is that The 12 months written warning will continue. I'll let you know the findings

[cal37]

Is your union rep going in the heariung with you and If not why not?

[crafterman]

Yes he is going into the meeting with me and attended the disciplinary investigation meeting and the disciplinary hearing. Apparently according to the disciplinary procedure the appeal hearing is the final answer.

[dx100uk]

if the unioun are involved then you will win hands down.

make SURE that everything that should be is struck from your employees record that they keep on you.

request a copy, under the data protection act, they MUST show it to you.

get the union rep to make this request at the end of the meeting if necess. if tave got nothing to hide, them they should show you it immediately.

 

dx100uk

 

dx100uk

[cal37]

Yes he is going into the meeting with me and attended the disciplinary investigation meeting and the disciplinary hearing. Apparently according to the disciplinary procedure the appeal hearing is the final answer.

 

 

I wish you the very best, please let us know how it goes.

[crafterman]

Well my appeal was unsuccesful. So in theory the 12 months written warning stands. The appeal panel looked at the evidence and my grounds for appeal. they considered an email (defamatory to me) created the day after the event was significant. I was not notified about the allegations for 10 weeks. They say they will acknowledge concerns about this length of time and the fact that my line manager chose to say nothing to me for the whole of the two days of the event in their letter to me. In the hand written appeal meeting notes which i asked for a copy of I have claimed that the evidence 4 emails and 2 statements all break the code of conduct (it was breach of the code of conduct for which they found me guilty) and as such should not have been included as evidence. The union guy suggested i get copies of the hand written notes directly after the meeting quickly read them and compare them with the typed ones which will be created form them. These 4 emails i regard as defamatory to me. Things are not over yet though. I have made an S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) for all emails with my data in them back to 2005 and a request under the Freedom of Information Act act regarding procedures etc. Im still turning the appeals meeting over in my mind but not given up yet. To be honest I actually feel stronger for the experience of going through this process. I still have another disciplinary to go for which they decided to suspend me. My response to the second will be totally different with the knowledge i have learned. Thanks for yoru support and help and its great to know that there are a few people in my corner supporting me.