please help - urgent - son disclosed disability and is now facing dismissal

[ThatVikRinA22]

please can anyone help me quickly as im stuck as to what to say to him.

In December 2013 my son took a job as a systems administrator, he had been working as a systems administrator previously.

2 weeks ago he was taken off probation, indicating he could do the job effectively.

Yesterday he had a meeting with management and he disclosed that he struggles with some organisation due to the fact he has aspergers syndrome.

today they have taken all his access to the servers away from him and given him menial tasks to do.
he has asked why and they have said it is basically because he disclosed his AS in the meeting yesterday. It is clearly discrimination.

now - here is the real problem.

When DS did his CV for his very first employer he was still at college doing A levels.
He put his predicted grades on his CV.
he went to uni to do computer science.
he got a foundation degree but dropped out 3 weeks before he graduated fully due to mental health issues and he was offered a job as a ssystems administrator down south which he took. He worked there for 6 months with no issues but was homesick and got the current job because it was more local and he moved back home.

Yesterday while going through the CV he realised (much to his horror) that he had merely updated his CV and added to it, He did not change his A level grades, he did not realise he had left his predicted grades on there - his actual grades were lower.

This basically looks as though he lied on his CV. He has explained the situation and said he did not deliberately mislead - and to try and explain himself he then declared his AS.

This is now being used against him and he says they are now contemplating dismissing him.

They also began asking him why he "failed" university. (he did not fail - he got a foundation degree and then dropped out - but he can think on his feet and just sat and took all this)

He can do the job but he does get stressed and panics when people shout at him - they have said because he panics people perceive problems to be his fault when in fact it may be a server going down or something external which he then has to fix - thats his job -

what i am failing to understand is that 2 weeks ago they took him off probation and were happy with him.
yesterday he declared his disability.
today they are talking about dismissal and have taken his job off him and given him menial tasks - he is having to go through a 100 page document and copy and paste bits from it to another document.

he is capable of the job. he has proved that.

please can anyone advise? flowery - are you here!!???

thank you!

i cant believe it - he is so open with people and its his downfall. im so pissed off.
really need to nip out but thank you. wotn be long....

I've seen you post about your son before, and IIRC, he's a competent sysadmin, albeit without a huge amount of experience and qualifications, isn't he?

I think that, apart from any disability discrimination procedures, he does need to start looking for another job, and make sure that the issues with the incorrect CV are fixed. He perhaps needs to look at working in a bigger organisation where he's part of a large IT team and he doesn't deal with the users directly, so doesn't get the hassle of people shouting at him. Has he tried targeting the local University IT teams, for example?

I know it's too late for this situation, but for future reference unions aren't a thing of the past even in smaller independent organisations. He just needs to look at the TUC website and decide which union to join. If he's the only member in his workplace then ok the union won't be able to do the 'collective bargaining' eg agreeing pay and pension deals with the employer, but importantly he WILL be able to take a union rep with him to any meetings like this ( it would be illegal for his employers to prevent him) and he would get full legal advice and representation.
God luck with ACAS op.

No helpful advice either, but sending empathy and support. My son also has ASD and is a similar age to yours, although he also has learning difficulties and no formal qualifications. He is finding it so hard to get a job. Nightmare times, sadly. Hope things work out for your son. I have read your threads and know how difficult things have been for you.

unions are a thing of the past i think in small independent companies.

Anyone can join a union, even if there's not one recognised in their company. Unions offer a lot more than just pay bargaining - mine now has a section which deals with individual contacts, as that's a large part of work these days. They have experts on employment law and so on. However, most unions won't take on existing cases (with a few exceptions), so joining on right now probably won't help.

They're talking bollocks if they think Asperger's increases his liability to the company. There are a lot of traits in people with Asperger's which make them good sys admins, and it's not uncommon to find them doing it as work. It sounds like he's capable, as he's passed his probation. From what you say, they are just acting out of prejudice, but you need to be sure of exactly what has been said and as others have said, try and get a timeline of events. If he can get a copy of the company's disciplinary process/staff handbook, that's also going to be useful.

Good luck.

(I've been a sys admin for 15 years - some of them make appalling people managers when they get promoted...)

well he is home. had to go and collect him. im afraid i have had a terrible day and ended up having a good cry.

upshot is this.
he is confused. they have basically removed him from the job and yet they have left him on call as a systems admin - he has already had to sort out an out of hours problem tonight because he got a bleep notifying him that there was a server down. he has fixed it and sent management an email.

so he cant do the job but he can when no one else is available????

he had a meeting in which the managing director stated he has a list of issues - and yet - none of these "issues" were a problem until yesterday when he disclosed his AS - funny that.

they have said they want to "implement systems" to combat any issues and minimise the risk to the business....yadda yadda yadda. they have not said what the perceived risks are, or what these systems entail.

they dont actually seem to know what to do with him now.

they do have some kind of PCI inspection next week so he thinks if they are going to dismiss him they will wait until after that because he is of use up until then.

the managing director has said he thinks that ds is under too much pressure and wants him to do the more menial tasks this week and then look at development - ie - programming - but they have not stated whether they intend to keep him on or not.

i have asked ds to honestly tell me if there have been any issues. He says he has been one incident to his knowledge - once when he was "on call" out of hours and forgot the company lap top.

he admits his organisation skills are poor and need working on - but he also says that his MD says that people wrongly perceive him as being at fault because if they have a problem and put pressure on DS he panics and flusters, and they assume the problem has been caused by him - even though it hasnt. MD says its about perception.

DS cannot play office politics and is very honest and open - when they asked why he failed university he tried to explain himself - he didnt fail - he left and got a job.
that question would have flustered him and i know he would have felt immediately as if he had done something wrong.

he is just waiting now to find out what they will do. I have been in bits all day. it came to a head earlier and i have had a good cry.
seems him holding down a job might have been too good to be true.

i now have no idea whether or not he should be so honest about his AS in future.
the fact he had been taken off probation suggests he should have kept quiet.

the fact they are openly saying they have removed him from the job due to his disclosure suggests the same.

how can people be honest and open about disability in this climate?

Contact ACAS asap - they are fantastic ...
I'm not up to speed on this but pretty certain the 2 yr qualifying period for 'normal' employment rights doesn't count in this case - employer's legal requirement to not discriminate on the grounds of disability starts from the recruitment process.
An employer has limited rights to ask about disability in the recruitment process (only if it is relevant to the job etc) so nothing may have been on the application form - I think as long as he hasn't blatantly lied there - and even if he has in the circumstances - he may well still have some rights...and legal rights rather than employment ones...
And they should be prepared to help him with his disability to do his job...
And if the meeting with the MD was considered to be part of the disciplinary process (a hearing) he had the right to be accompanied by someone - inc a work colleague -or even his mum IIRC - and he could have asked it to be at time more convenient to him
He should have a contract/written statement of employment or something indicating what the companies grievances and disciplinary procedures are - might be worth looking at ....
Good Luck ...

He says he has been one incident to his knowledge - once when he was "on call" out of hours and forgot the company lap top

He is far from the first sys admin to have done that, and he won't be the last. If it's a one-off - well, it's not good, but we all screw up once in a while. If that's the only problem, he's doing pretty well.

Organisational skills can be worked on - there are all sorts of courses available on things like time management, prioritisation and so on. There are also lots of tools - online stuff like mail filters (e.g. you can highlight stuff from particular people,) or manual ones like a diary, or a to-do notebook. He just needs to find something that will work for him. Basically, a good manager would be supporting him by giving him some development goals, so he can find ways to improve.

Perception can be a major problem, though. A good exercise will be to go through all the things he does for work, and find examples of things he's done well, so he can counter the claims.

i will be contacting ACAS so thanks for reminding me they are there - and ive had a pm from someone with some experience offering help which is just lovely,

he deserves a chance. The fact that none of these so called "issues" were raised before he was taken off probation are telling.

i felt for him tonight when he got the bleep out of hours - he fixed the problem, diagnosed the problem, and sent management an email detailing the problem and how he fixed it.

he said he did it because they might think better of him. theoretically he could have ignored it because its no longer his job.....

but he didnt.

im so sad for him. i really want him to get some clarification about what they are going to do.

If they are treating him badly he would do well to apply for other jobs perhaps

I find public sector can be a bit more supportive of difference/disability (they employed me despite 2 year gap on my cv from ill health)

By removing him from his job that he was performing well they are treating his less favourably because he disclosed a disability, which is discrimination. The fact that he hadn't disclosed it previously does not mean it's ok to discriminate against him now.

They can dismiss him very easily at this early stage for no reason at all if they like, as he can't claim unfair dismissal, however if there is reason to believe the dismissal is wholly or partly because of his disability, that would be unfair dismissal which he can claim from day one.

If he gets dismissed, ostensibly for this cv issue, then I think he has reasonable grounds to believe his disclosure of a disability was at least partly the reason, and to appeal it on that basis.

Being charitable, could it be that now they know he has a disability, they are considering what "reasonable adjustments" they need to make, and have gone about this badly, making him think he's going to get dismissed? Could there be misinterpretation on his part?

Nothing to add, just (((( vicar ))))