overtime not offered to all

[Sidewinder]

Right.

 

The point that has been missed - repeatedly, and as pointed out many times, potentially dangerously, is that you persist in using the term 'Discrimination'. Whilst it is accepted that your advice is well intended, and your sentiments regarding the rights of the normal working person to stand up to perceived injustice are indeed noble and substantially correct, you MUST accept that where your advice and statements regarding suggested courses of action need to be soundly based in LAW, not just in emotion or morality.

 

You will, naturally, be aware that this forum, as with many others, serves a primary function as a source of advice and information for many people who, whether for reasons of their own making or otherwise may be in the depths of despair . In such circumstances, it is entirely possible that maybe not on this occasion, but due to the nature of the internet, many months hence, somebody may cherry pick the comments or suggested actions from this thread and apply them to their own situation. The consequences of that may be not merely an employee looking silly in a disciplinary hearing, but maybe losing his job through a misguided militancy because some internet forum caused him to believe that he had the right to argue that black was white. It may indeed cause a desperate employee looking for retribution to lodge an ill-founded case at an Employment Tribunal and plead a completely unwinnable argument based on the fact that CAG led him to believe that his was a clear case of discrimination. We have a responsibility to suggest an appropriate resolution, and where there is a suggestion of unlawful behaviour, then we must be correct about the legal basis of that standpoint. Ambiguity is a luxury that many who visit the site cannot afford, and in some cases it is more than just a reputation at stake.

 

Whilst you may know what you mean, discrimination has a very strict legal definition in employment and equality law. An employer can quite lawfully treat people differently in the workplace in certain circumstances, but when advising on that we MUST be very clear about unfavourable treatment and discrimination - they are two very different things in law, and for the reasons outlined above, and several times within this thread unless it is in the legal sense of the word we must avoid suggesting that one is the same as the other.

 

Rather than accept this from people whose day to day job relies on them knowing the difference and being to interpret what is law and what is merely good practice, you have tried to justify your arguments by trying to tie them in with tenuous legal arguments and by trying to apply legal principles where they are irrelevant or just plain wrong. Where people disagree with this, it is for good reason. For the most part it is because they know better and in many cases do this for a living.

 

If an answer is not to your liking, appears critical or is delivered in a curt manner, it is not because they need a 'chill pill', but because people need to understand in very simple terms whether they have a case or not. When dealing with something as important as one's job and livelihood it is not always the right thing to sugar-coat a response and to suggest that there are grounds to pursue an unwise or likely fruitless course of action. Sometimes it is necessary to simply say that yes, you have been hard done by, but realistically the thing to do is to move on and learn lessons for next time. The same goes whether this is aimed at the person delivering erroneous or misleading advice, or to the OP looking for an all-guns-blazing argument with the boss.

 

As with anybody else willing to give up their time to offer help to others, your input is welcomed, but please have the good grace, common sense or sound legal knowledge to know when to persist and when to withdraw, rather than to remain in an entrenched position and divert a thread away from its purpose and more towards arguing your own case in the face of more qualified opinion.

[Jimbob1987]

Caring Guy, You have been very patient bearing with us throughout this exchange of views and opinions. Especially when most of what you initially enquired about seems to have been overlooked or forgotten.

 

That initial enquiry was:

 

 

You have since explained why you feel aggrieved about this:

 

(a) The extra work was offered to one person without any opportunity given to anyone else who might have been interested or equally, or even more, entitled to be offered it.

 

(b) No reasonable explanation has been given to justify the manager’s decision despite informal conversations and questions among those concerned.

 

The first question then is; do you have a grievance? I say you do.

 

(i) Because you believe you have and you say you have.

 

(ii) You raise and discuss the issue with colleagues who are equally put out.

 

(iii) You have taken the time and trouble to seek advice about the course of action you should take on this forum.

 

I have yet to hear what this is if not a grievance.

 

The next question is; how to resolve your grievance?

 

(i) Do nothing; put it down to bad luck and get over it. This is not an option unless you are prepared to accept being treated like a doormat.

 

(ii) Try to have the matter resolved informally. You are being advised to take this course.But you have already tried this option; you have said repeatedly that you have tried over a period in conversations and informal enquiries to have your concerns and questions answered, to no avail. I see no point in continuing to advise this course. A reasonable manager would have set your mind at rest at this stage.

 

(iii) Put your grievance on a formal footing by invoking the grievance procedure.Employment law gives you the right to pursue your grievance through a formal grievance procedure. This could hardly be described as the action of a nonconformist or a revolutionary.

 

At the end of the day all you want at this stage is an answer to your grievance. It may be that you will get an answer that is quite reasonable and will persuade you that your grievance is unfounded. It may be that the answer you get will lead you to believe that you have grounds for taking the matter further. Either way you need to take the first step before you begin seriously considering the second.

 

It seems to me that you have already come to the conclusions and are more or less following the process I have outlined above.

 

The law lists some forms of discrimination as being more serious than others. This is not to say that suffering unfavourable treatment is not discrimination.

 

I suspect Atlas01 has lost the plot. He begins by advising caution and suggesting that making an official complaint might be going too far and has since progressed to advising CG to get his colleagues organised, sort of unionised, act as shop steward with authority to go to management with ultimatums.

 

Of all the advice proffered I find that of the ‘manager within the care sector’ not only sad but worrying and anyone with such an attitude should not be in a position of authority. It shows two traits that are unacceptable in a manager entrusted with responsibility. Firstly, too incompetent or too lazy to set up a fair rota system for overtime, especially since, on his own admission, the need for it comes up all the time. Secondly, what sort of a shambolic setup is he creating and running when his main concern when making decisions is to do the first thing that comes into his head in order to get it out of the way. I hope and pray that I or mine are never in the situation where he or anyone with similar ideas on how to manage has any influence.

 

Anyway Caring Guy, it seems from your last post that you are getting close to a resolution, here’s hoping.

 

Skinnered thanks for ur opinion, which is exactly what it is.

 

But have u ever worked in care, management, care management. Probably no.

 

For ur information when I am dishing shifts out, I feel I have no choice but to prioritise my work. In a sample month I have rotas and wages to do for 8 services - 27+ staff, 8 team meetings, 27+ supervisions, 8 audits (16 pages long), reviews (at least 8 per month), conduct issues, training (self and staff), adult protection issues, finances, staff shadowing, managers meetings, social work meetings, spending time with service users, plus having to answer my phone all day from many people. My phone book has 123 people in it whom I have contact with at least oncer every 6 weeks.

I also cover a distance of 57 miles (shortest route) from my base return visiting my services.

 

I have tried every system known to man but none work as great as you may think.

 

And for ur information I find you lazy and incompetent to give out factual information

 

Again I thank you for your OPINION.

 

Have a nice night.

 

J

[assisted blonde]

Well prehaps i ambeing thick, but if the person who got the overtime was the only one who had expressed an interest in doing overtime then how can it be unfair that he got it? how would anyone know that other people wanted oivertime if they hadnt already said so?

[altobelli]

Its not necessarily unfair on a one off basis, but I think it would have been better if either there was a policy for allocating overtime or the manager made everyone aware that overtime was available. Its not a major problem as long as the manager thinks about allocating overtime differently in the future. Otherwise, you have a catch-22 situation where the manager will make your point that he didn't know anyone else was interested in overtime, and the employees will make the point that they didn't volunteer for overtime because they didn't know any was available. It just a communication problem.

[assisted blonde]

Thanks altobelli that makes sense, as with so many things in life it can be communication problem, we all talk but dont always communicate. I agree that a different procedure would help in the future but if this is a one off I can see its annoying but it is one of those things, it may be that the person who got the overtimne asked some while ago saying that he would be interested if some came up in the future, we dont really know but I would suggest that that is the most likely senario.