Anyone knowledgeable in employment law??

[worriedfamily]

Will try to keep this brief. DH is a manager for a well known company. They employ around 500/600 managers. Managers and supervisors have been told to put jobs through account A instead of account B for the last 2.5ish years by ops managers and auditors and divisional directors.

Reason for this is it makes the figures look much better and the company and workers make more money. Few weeks ago a number of managers were suspended (DH included) and were disciplined (process took around 6-7 weeks) and of the 32 managers suspended 8 were sacked for gross misconduct.

The 8 managers appealed against the decision and of the 8, 2 managers were reinstated.
Before the appeal was held a letter stated that DH would have £300 of his final wage withheld as he has recieved an overpayment of his bonus. They actually kept the whole £2000 leaving us in severe financial hardship.

Upshot is DH and his fellow managers are taking it to tribunal. Is there any point? Technically they were sacked for fraud?

DH feels that he has been treated unfairly because every single manager commited the same gross misconduct and have had no punishment whatsoever. He will now never work in his chosen field again and the town we live in is not that big and neighbours/friends and old customers will know why he is no longer working there. I know it is his own fault but i kinda see where he is coming from?

Thanks to anyone who trawled through this essay x

Polite little bump?

Check your home contents insurace, do you have legal expense insurance? Check all insurance policies for the same. If yes, suggest your dh instructs a good solicitor, have a look in Chambers legal directory. Best to get the solciitor to negotiate with your insurer and best to instruct your own solicitor rather than let them choose for you.

Good luck.

If your DH was acting under instruction from his superiors then he is not at fault. Does he have any evidence of this? (emails/witnessed conversations etc)?

I would take it to tribunal if that was the case. Is your DH represented by a union? If so they should be providing legal representation.

Also worth him putting in a claim for unlegal deduction of wages ASAP to the company if they have witheld his pay without good reason.

Kafka is right to say check your home insurance policy. It's often called "family legal protection" or similar.

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Thank you so much both of you. DH has no union subscription and our family legal protection is through his old employer so a conflict of interest apparently according to one of the other dismissed managers who has insurance through same company....

He has no emails or anything of that kind of evidence but all of the managers have said exactly the same thing ie the process was shown to them by senior management.

Letter came today from tribunal folk with a response from DH old company. They have said that although each managers committed the same gross misconduct that each case was considered and dealt with individually. Makes no sense to a dimwit like poor old me!!

Will anyone from higher up in the management chain give evidence on his behalf to confirm that it was the managers were told to do? Basically you need to get as much evidence as possible that DH was acting under instructions.

Did DH benefit personally? The reason why some were dismissed but not others may be because some benefitted more than others.

Also, what is the rest of his record like - has he been in trouble before? If you can show that he had a good record apart from this that may help.

Not sure I understand the conflict of interest point - if the legal protection policy is through his employer then it should have been clear that it would not fund employment matters, otherwise you may have been misled and/or paid too much for the cover you have, although this would be a separate claim.

If you can't get advice under the policy even though it is supposed to cover employment disputes then go the CSAB. Also some law firms will act on a no win no fee for employment law matters but you should be aware that they will then take some of the compensation DH wins if he is successful so you may be better paying for an initial interview before deciding what to do if you can afford it.

I am not at all sure that it will be enough for your dh to say that he was only acting on instructions from his managers. If what he was doing was actually illegal (fraud? false accounting?) then the tribunal might decide that dismissal was the appropriate response. What is he contesting - the dismissal, the withdrawal of the bonus or both?

Does he have anything - circulars, e-mails - which corroborate that this was a company policy which he was following? Was anyone charged with a criminal offence? That too would be part of the picture.

You certainly need to seek legal advice. I know you may have to pay for it, but the cost of him losing his career is far bigger.

Nobody higher up will admit to telling managers to do it. They are obv scared of being sacked (as i would be)

Every manager within the company did the same thing and they all benifited from the way the fleetaccount was misused. There are managers who were made an awful lot more bonus than DH or his fellow dismissed managers who have kept their jobs.

He has an exemplary work record (as have the rest of the managers who have been sacked) There are however dozens and dozens of managers who are on final written warnings who have not had their workplaces investigated and have not been sacked or even disciplined.

The company have taken no action against the supervisors as they were acting on managerial instruction ie managers etc so why can a company then sack 8 of the best managers and not take any action against the majority of the workforce?

He feels (as do the other sacked managers) that they have been singled out and treated unfairly. They feel that every manager should have had the same punishment as the managers who were sacked. Is it unfair that a few were sacked and the rest were not?

Nobody has been charged. There is no 'evidence' except the word of the sacked managers who all tell the same story. Auditors showed managers how to wrongly process the accounts and a divisional director who told ops managers etc that it was ok to carry on as the system was flawed.

If DH and the others hadn't done it they would have been out of a job anyway as the company raised targets so high that the men couldn't possibly hit them

DH is finished in his career now anyway but thanks to all of you for your help and advice x

Worried - I understand that nobody will admit to what went on, that's why I asked whether your dh had any evidence at all - company manual, notes of team meetings, anything - which he could give to the tribunal to bear out his version of events. Has he really got nothing? If there has been inconsistency in the way that he and others have been treated, then that too is something on which he ought to seek legal advice.

As I said before (sorry) I do think that your dh is starting in a weak position if what he was doing was illegal (as opposed to against company policy) but that isn't to say that there aren't aspects of how he's been treated that he could challenge. I hope he will get some legal advice.

Thanks Madbad there is no manual and absolutely no written evidence whatsoever. It was all verbal. There was a large managers meeting/dinner where it was discussed by the more senior management and was condoned by them, in that nobody could ever get into trouble as they couldn't sack the whole of could they?

He recieved a reply from the tribunal folk today and they have to respond with comments so....

There is a lady who used to work for the company who was unfairly dismissed and won her tribunal who has been helping the guys with their disciplinarys and appeals and statements etc. The guys are seeing a lawyer asap too. Fingers crossed for the preliminary hearing the Judge thinks they have a case.

If not then the family home etc will have to go

I'm glad to hear they're seeing a lawyer.