This is going to be a whopper of a post, sorry! But would really appreciate any advice that anyone can give.
On Tuesday, DP was informed that he had carried out an act of gross misconduct and was to be suspended on full pay from work, namely 'conflict of interest and breach of intellectual property' (this is all that was stated on his letter telling him he was facing a disciplinary and was being suspended) due to a website he has. This misconduct is alleged (he assumed - he was not told this) because the website states he is open to freelance work (something that is specifically allowed in the employees handbook), and contains images of some work he did (although not anything like enough for anyone to be able to copy the work).
DP went to what he thought was the disciplinary hearing, only to find out it was the evidence gathering session, and did his best to defend himself, despite not being very clear on what he was accused of. At the end of this meeting he asked for further clarification of the allegations before the disciplinary hearing, next week.
He was sent a letter today (2 days later) which lays out a much more involved list of accusations, including:
- Alleged soliciting of freelance work (which is allowed in the employee handbook, as long as there is no conflict of interest, so don't really get that)
- Misrepresentation of himself (no idea how he is doing this)
- Detrimental impact on the business (NB. he hasn't actually carried out any freelance work, so not sure business is suffering)
- Breach of covenant - knowing that any approach for freelance work would be in direct competition and not permitted by the company (I just don't see that this is true, as he is trained in 2 types of work, and the other isn't at all in competition, and even the design side of his job involves lots of different aspects, very few of them in competition with his company if he were to do them)
- Breach of intellectual property, particularly copyright and publishing rights in publishing the results of a piece of his design work on his website (a photo he took himself on his own camera).
He has also just received the minutes from the evidence gathering hearing, and they contain several massive omissions and lots of small omissions and some significant errors. These changes do not make DP exactly appear guilty, but make him seem unhelpful, ill-prepared and unwilling to defend himself, compared to how he actually was in the meeting. This leads us to believe that the minutes were either taken completely incompetently or were doctored by the manager before being sent to DP.
Other relevant facts include the fact that the same manager carrying out the disciplinary also tried to give DP a written warning 4 months ago without a disciplinary procedure (DP requested a disciplinary before being given a warning, manager agreed then just abandoned proceedings). No warning was issued. This followed on from a redundancy process during which no member of staff was made redundant, but the other two members of staff (DP was the third) are understood to have been much more cowed and alarmed by the process than DP was - he was described as argumentative (by this same manager) for standing up for himself during the redundancy process, when false allegations (albeit minor ones) were made about his conduct.
We are so lost with how to to proceed! Our main questions are:
- Is it OK that his manager has only properly outlined the charges against DP after the evidence gathering session - DP believes that these accusations may have been massaged to fit the evidence he gave, but they are more of an expansion on the original accusations, I suppose [charitable head]
- DP feels that this guy, for whatever reason, has a bit of a vendetta against him (given the manager's previous attempt to give him a written warning with no disciplinary). We are unsure whether to start a grievence for bullying or anything - is there any point? How would we prove it?
- If freelance work is allowed in his employees handbook, how the hell can it be a sack-worthy offence to be openly available for freelance work?
- Does anyone have any ideas about DP posting the photos of the completed product (well, part of it)? Is it really that awful? images of the item are now in the public domain, and it is in a public place and could be photographed by anyone, as it could at the time he photographed it, although it does still belong to the manufacturer (it's a big, single item, like a luxury car, now parked in a public car park)
- Can we do anything about the hugely inaccurate minutes? DP will obviously raise this issue in the next meeting, but if it is minuted as badly as this one, it probably won't show in the minutes!
Ummm... any other thoughts/questions much appreciated!
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