Bullying at work

[Sunandrainbows]

My boyfriend had an injury at work and was off work for a few months. A colleague of his was gossiping about my boyfriend in a pub and told one of my boyfriend's friends he will be having a meeting to lose his job. He got very anxious about losing his job when he heard this.

My boyfriend has since returned to work on crutches while still in pain due to pressure from management. He was encouraged by management to have an informal meeting with the colleague who had been gossiping. Since then he is experiencing lots of colleagues ignoring him and passive aggressiveness from a manager.

I really feel from him as he is unfit for work and is now being bullied by colleagues. What should he do? He fears losing his job on capability grounds as he is working reduced hours.

He has an in house union rep who alighted him and told him he had misunderstood the colleague who had been gossiping about him in the pub.

Where is the bullying? The colleague might have been gossiping but what he described is common practice - long term sick leave leads to meetings and may very well lead to dismissal on capability. So those things are facts, and colleagues do gossip even if they shouldn't.

What pressure did management exert? Because obviously their interest is employees being in work, but you've given no details about how they "bullied" him into returning against his will. If he isn't well enough to work then he stays off sick.

Presumably he had put in a grievance against the colleague? That probably wasn't a great idea. On the face of what you are saying, the colleague expressed an opinion about what happens when someone is off long term. That wasn't wrong. But if other people are not happy about that he can't make them happy about it. What are they actually doing? And what is the manager actually doing?

And you need to be realistic. He seems to be in a phased return (reduced hours). If he is not fit enough to work them he should not be in work. But, as his colleague says, there are possible consequences to that and he might lose his job. Sorry, that's just reality. If he is fit enough then he'll need to increase his hours at some point. Personally I'd concentrate on that and not pile any further problems on himself.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not being unsympathetic, just realistic. In most jobs there's a limited tolerance for sickness absence, fair or not, and real or not. If he's been off for some months as you say, many employers would have started some procedures towards possible dismissal by now. He doesn't need to start battles on any more fronts right now if he can avoid it.

On an entirely seperate note, if the accident happened at work, is he claiming that it was due to the employers negligence?

I kept telling him not to go back to work and some of his colleagues when they saw him unpaid crutches said he should not have gone in.

The management and union rep were coercive and told him to put in his grievance in writing when all he wanted was for someone to just say for people not to talk about him. I don't know why but he did a letter with his union rep and handed it in and told me afterwards. He said the letter mentioned how he has been treated by the company over the years and the man who gossiped. I would not have done a letter and did tell him he should ignore his colleague who gossiped but he wanted it taking further.

I think he needs to lay low. I told him many times before his injury that he should leave and it's only now he wants to leave as he has had enough.

He keeps getting injuries at work, its unsafe as many others get injured but the company has good lawyers so people don't get compensation. He didn't report the injury at work at the time and wanted to a few days later but was told he would get a disciplinary for reporting it late so he would be even worse off.

I understand the employer needs to make sure people are not off long term sick. He is worried if he leaves he will miss out on redundancy in the future as redundancies have happened before there. I don't believe he will get redundant now because other branches have closed around the country recently so the work will just come to his branch instead.

AH - so this is about more than the sick leave.

I suspect you are quite correct. The employer may very well be rubbish and awful - but the option on that is, as you correctly state, to leave. However, he was being unreasonable on the grievance. It isn't a school yard. People gossip - they gossip everywhere! So he should have sucked that up and ignored it - unfortunately management can't stop people gossiping, and he can't expect them to referee disputes in this manner. People are going to talk about other people, and nothing this person said would be considered "unexpected". Long term sickness has consequences, and there's nobody in the world of work (I hope) who doesn't realise that you could lose your job over it. But he didn't "just" complain about that - he dragged up years worth of complaints you say? That is why they insisted on a grievance if he wanted it dealing with! Doesn't he see that he was trying to do the same thing - "gossip" complaints about his collegaues and his employer, bringing up things from the past, but not wanting to do so in a way that they can be dealt with? I don't think it was coercive - it was correct. He didn't have to do it, he chose to.

If I may say so, and I mean this in no way as a criticism, but really by way of an observation - he needs to man up!!!! He is an adult but he seems to drify along "happily" in life taking the easiest route to nowhere. I am not seeing either the management or the union here as bullying him or coercing him. I am not saying that they are perfect or great either - just that he is, or ought to be, the architect of his own life, and he isn't being.

He has hung on to what he says is a bad job with a bad employer in the hope of redundancy? Who the hell does that? He says this has been this bad for years!!!! So he should have left years ago!!! He wants somebody else to sort out his gossiping colleagues rather that either ignoring it or telling his collegaues to stop gossiping about him. He didn't report and injury - and he should have done. But then he doesn't pursue it because he's told he'll get into trouble for not reporting it (which, to be fair to the employer, they are actually right that not reporting it was very stupid). He goes back to work when he isn't fit enough to work. I am sure that list goes on.

If he's going to let life and work buffet him around and never deal with it, then nothing will change. And you also need to be aware of the fact that if he won't change things then nobody will change them for him - this is who and what he is. You can't change that or do it for him.