Fictional minutes of a meeting

[czechout]

Morning all, your advice please.
I attended a meeting with senior leadership re: distribution of work tasks following the redundancy of a colleague in team. The SLT are notorious bullies and yes, I am looking for work elsewhere. This meeting was called as my Line Manager had tried to give me all departed colleague's work and not give themselves or another colleague any additional work. My work hours are already extensive so I made it clear what I could do and what was not reasonable.
I asked for someone to attend with me as support as have been feeling vulnerable at work for a while and made this clear in an email. This request was refused.
I attended this meeting and was listened to and there was no disagreements with allocation of tasks in the meeting. I asked if minutes were being taken and was told they weren't which I found very odd. Nevertheless I made my own notes. Later that day I received an email saying minutes had in fact been made unknown to the person emailing (even though apparent notetaker and person who said they weren't being taken in the meeting were in room at same time).
I have since received the minutes of the meeting and they contain many fictional elements and allocate me work tasks there was no agreement upon. They also leave out allocation of work to those assigned in the meeting.
I made my own notes during the meeting and have now made corrections to the minutes sent. My union said to involve them straight away. Am thinking to just send the corrected version give them an opportunity to re-think matters and see what happens. What are your thoughts?

I'd be speaking to an employment lawyer. How long have you worked there?

7 years

If you're minded to leave (or feel like you're being pushed out) an employment lawyer might be able to help you negotiate an exit. Otherwise you could go with your suggestion, making it clear you intend to raise a grievance if the issue isn't resolved. IME this is only going one way though, sorry OP, they sound most unpleasant.

Your union should be able to provide you with legal advice. It can't do any harm to at least see what course of action they would suggest.

Attendees at a meeting are usually given the opportunity to review minutes and provide feedback. So yes I would do that, although I wouldn’t correct the document itself, I would list out the points in the minutes that you disagree with and also list out things that have not been minuted.

This was a regular work meeting not a disciplinary meeting, as such, there was no grounds for you to bring somebody else along and it was reasonable for them to refuse the request.

There is an employment board and for more advice it might be worth asking admin to move this over.

Many thanks to you all for your sound advice. I will try to get it moved.

I agree @lawandgin it does seem to be heading that way so not much to lose in many regards. I have been asked to attend a meeting tomorrow to discuss my need for support and feeling vulnerable.
Given the response with the fictional minutes I am minded not to do this as with a member of the senior team however wondering how I now decline diplomatically. Simply put there is no trust and the bullying has only continued today via email so it's relentless even if I were to accept their version of events.

Thinking along lines of:

Dear X,
On reflection I think it would be better this meeting was held in person.

Thank you for your understanding.

Czech....

Being as you have Union, would it not be wise to get them a lot more involved. Unite was brilliant when I had a clearly untenable and all confidence lost issue with work. They got me six months wages in a situation where they knew I was going to leave anyway and there were other aggravating factors that I can't mention here.

OP there's no harm asking for the meeting to be in person, but be careful not attending if they don't agree to this in advance. You don't want to be facing a disciplinary for failure to manage a reasonable management instruction. I actually wonder if they are planning to have a without prejudice conversation with you tomorrow. I think it would be worth you calling round a couple of law firms this afternoon just in case. Most will do a free initial callback, some do 30 minutes free. I am employment lawyer, but am not keen on outing myself or inviting any accusations of advertising!

Record the meeting on your phone. Otter Voice Notes app transcribes it too.

Thank you @lawandgin, you sound like a fab lawyer but I respect your wishes to stay anonymous :)

@incenseandpeppermints as far as I understand it, you are not allowed to record anyone without the prior permission of participants.

It is legal to record a meeting without informing the attendees - but it is illegal to leave a recording device on the room.

Oh that's brilliant thank you wasn't aware @incenseandpeppermints - how does that work when you are online? What constitutes the 'room' if you are meeting online? Okay to record from home?

I'm not that brilliant otherwise my PP would have said "failure to obey a reasonable management instruction"!

A lot of my clients record meetings. It may be a gross misconduct offence if permission isn't sought. It may specify in your company handbook. Doesn't stop a lot of them doing it of course. It can be useful to inform your adviser of what's going on, but not that helpful if you can't refer to it in correspondence with the other side without outing your client. It really depends on the circumstances.

This happened to me as a way to attempt to get me fired (the real reason was that I was pregnant). I disagreed in an email back and gave them my version of events. Then later sent a letter with all of my grievances. I managed to keep my job until maternity leave. Hopefully you can find a new job soon. Why are there so many toxic workplaces?

@lawandgin thank you for that information, will bear in mind.

@jessnoah That's awful, thank you for your good wishes. I hope you went on to much better. I think the reason there are so many workplaces like this is there is a lack of the basic values of honesty and integrity. Impatience also comes into it.

Quick question, in the amended minutes I send do I add in that I asked if minutes were being taken and was told they weren't or is the email from senior team saying they had in fact taken them enough in way of evidence?

I would add that in OP.

Yes I would add that in and might even phrase it as a question “why was I told told minutes were not being taken”.

Would you not have noticed someone taking minutes as they’d be typing away or was it virtual?

I’d include your union in everything from now on.

@czechout

Oh that's brilliant thank you wasn't aware *@incenseandpeppermints* - how does that work when you are online? What constitutes the 'room' if you are meeting online? Okay to record from home?

Yes, you can record phone or Zoom conversations. Don't tell them though - let them hang themselves on their own rope. A recording is admissible in court.

anyone know the answer to this? :)

oh thank you, sorry just seen your answers. Many thanks :)

It was virtual but the person who said it was working onsite with PA in room

I received minutes on Monday night so was either going to send reply tonight or tomorrow. It's so stressful interacting with them I thought best give myself a weekend away to recover from their inevitable retaliation.