Company Policies

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phil Waters
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Originally posted by Warbler@Jan 22 2007, 09:43 PM
By contrast, I don't know for certain what's caused it (I suspect I know, but until I find out I've kept that to myself) you however don't seem to extend them that decency and are quite prepared to speculate.
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So at least we can agree on one thing then - neither of us actually know the reasons behind their extremely high absence rate. You prefer to blame the company, I prefer to have people take responsibility for their own actions.

Although I must say that your defence of the strike, despite the appalling individual behaviour of your union's members, rather leads me down a road of gaining a measure of understanding as to why we spend so much on public services in this country and receive so little in return. <_<
 
Originally posted by Warbler@Jan 23 2007, 08:38 AM
I'm seriously struggling to believe any employer would behave like that Phil? And coming so soon after the previous one, I can't help concluding that you might just be up to a bit of your ........... :brows:
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Believe.
 
It turns out that another woman (even younger than the last one) was given a written warning today because of her lateness/absence.

Being late back to sign in from breaks and lunches counts as being late.

She has been off 3 times since July last year, the 2nd of which was due to losing her unborn baby and she tried to commit suicide. She was off for 4 weeks
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Dont believe that
 
If their HR department was aware (as they surely were) of her recent history there is absolutely no way they would push the envelope in such a situation. No way at all...

The obvious answer is the ramifications of what could happen

I have no problem at all with strong action with genuine pisstakers (and in fairness...sometimes assumptions there can be wrong) but this was clearly something entirely different
 
Originally posted by Colin Phillips@Jan 23 2007, 09:44 AM
Clive, I'm a simple old soul! ..................what does "push the envelope" mean?
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It's wankspeak for taking things further.

My personal favourite piece of wankspeak at the moment is "glidepath". Meaning a plan of action to reduce the levels of a problem on a graph.
 
I don't have a problem with people being pulled up for being late back from breaks. Some people like to 'steal' time from their employers by adding 5 minutes to breaks. If they do it frequently they deserve at least to be reminded of their terms of employment. At the same time, I am against the idea of companies counting minutes as I believe it's counter-productive but that's a purely personal view.

I can quite easily believe absences for entirely valid reasons can trigger 'absence management' procedures as I've been subjected to them myself. My three absences were each accompanied by a doctor's certificate but it made no difference. The irony of the fact that my referral to the local health service incurred a further half-day off work seemed lost on my employers.
 
Warbler, it's true. The validity of the absences were not questioned. The amount of absences triggered alarm bells.

If you don't believe me, I don't actually care.
 
There is a point at which, though, however tragic an employee's medical history is, the employer has to say "Look, if you can't do the job in the times you've agreed to, maybe you need to look for shorter hours elsewhere". If the woman who lost her baby suffered from depression afterwards, she may not have had her mind on the minute hand, but after some months - and possibly many repeats of little latenesses - you've got to be fair to all of those employees who ARE'NT nicking five or ten minutes here and there.

I had a manic/depressive (or whatever we have to call it now) working for my pool of secretaries. She was receiving treatment for the condition, which she hadn't revealed at interview or during her pre-employment health check. I was, it seemed, expected to put up with her hysterical periods and her depressive periods to the detriment of her doing an acceptable job. Additionally, she came into work five minutes late every morning, and five minutes late after every lunch hour. That's ten minutes a day, 50 minutes a week, or half a day a month. What it builds up to, just nip-nip-nipping these minutes regularly, is someone who's added 6 paid days to their 'off' time every year, without working. Nice! Would they like to donate 6 days of their holiday back to the company now, to make up for it? Would they hell.

So I had to speak to her about her timekeeping, which led to floods of tears and wailing about her 'condition'. Which brought me to say that if her condition required her, on medical grounds, to need to work shorter hours, she should return to the UK and work part-time. I placed a record of the verbal warning on her file, and the timekeeping miraculously improved. Sometimes, tiresome though it is to deal with fully-formed adults like this, you just have to knock the nonsense on the head.
 
Originally posted by Phil Waters@Jan 23 2007, 10:23 AM
Warbler, it's true. The validity of the absences were not questioned. The amount of absences triggered alarm bells.

If you don't believe me, I don't actually care.
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Well it sounds absolutely horrific Phil, and I'm sure you'll understand that one would have doubts as to whether it could have taken place. Even Clive appears to have blanched at this one. I'm surprised, and frightened to be honest that they could find someone prepared to pull her for it, if venturing into the realms of suicidalism. I'd have refused, on the grounds that it wasn't a reasonable instruction in line with conscience and appropriate action. It's not a million miles removed from the old Victorian mill owner who used to sack women workers for getting pregnant. Mind you I suppose a call centre isn't that far removed from the 21st Century equivilant.

A mental condition however, is covered by the DDA, so whether you like or not Kriz, you wouldn't be able to use Saudi (I'm assuming) standards in the UK today. Provided the employee was prepared to pursue you of course, you'd be on very dodgey ground unless you could prove 'necessary reasonable adjustment'. The same legislation applies to NTL

I think the really cruel thing about this second case is there would be other ways of probably affecting a similar outcome or resolution without pouring bucket fulls of salt into the wounds
 
So I had to speak to her about her timekeeping, which led to floods of tears and wailing about her 'condition'. Which brought me to say that if her condition required her, on medical grounds, to need to work shorter hours, she should return to the UK and work part-time. I placed a record of the verbal warning on her file, and the timekeeping miraculously improved. Sometimes, tiresome though it is to deal with fully-formed adults like this, you just have to knock the nonsense on the head
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Careful

Could end up with one of those Texas Mcdonalds jobs...

Warbler... Ive worked withq quite a few HR directors (of varying standards) and on the bare facts we have here, they would not have taken that route. Not in a million years
 
Originally posted by krizon@Jan 23 2007, 11:41 AM
So I had to speak to her about her timekeeping, which led to floods of tears and wailing about her 'condition'. Which brought me to say that if her condition required her, on medical grounds, to need to work shorter hours, she should return to the UK and work part-time. I placed a record of the verbal warning on her file, and the timekeeping miraculously improved. Sometimes, tiresome though it is to deal with fully-formed adults like this, you just have to knock the nonsense on the head.
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Perhaps the electric shocks improved her outlook Kri.
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It happened as I described. Come and work for us and you will understand that middle management believe the year is 1453AD.

It doesn't matter how many HR directors anyone has had dealings with; the facts I described are true and, appalling or horrendous as they seem, they are true.

That's that.
 
Warbler - no, these were not Saudi directives, they were American, believe it or not. Saudi Arabia had a fully-comprehensive booklet called 'Workmen's Law and Regulations' set out for any employee's information as far back as 1970, well before this country had even begun to formally lay down what was acceptable or not. The Americans were - if not still are - very hard on sloppy timekeeping. Even if you sat around doing nothing all day, and many executives did, you were expected to fulfill the hours you'd contracted to work. Nipping off five minutes here and there constituted a breach of such a contract in their eyes, and also in their own employment manuals.

The Saudis had enshrined as a right a whole mass of employment issues which the UK didn't get round to for ages. For example, a pregnant employee was entitled to six weeks full paid leave prior to giving birth, then eight weeks fully paid leave following. After that, she should work only a six-hour day for three months and be given time off during the day for feeding her baby, which SHE WAS ALLOWED TO BRING TO WORK. Fathers-to-be were entitled to a full day's pay for the birth of their baby and three days off afterwards to assist the mother settle back home.

There are so many other examples of looking after workers' welfare, I've forgotten them, but they certainly set a standard which the UK didn't even address. There were workers' tribunals in lieu of unions, where lawyers would be appointed to address the panels on behalf of the aggrieved. There was a fair amount of exploitation of cheap labour - gosh, rather like the UK, then! - and the government recognised that left to their own devices, Saudi businesses would never set the standards themselves.

Back to the oil company: if you brought adequate medical documentation to say that your 'condition' meant that you needed to work for fewer hours than others, it would be accepted in the case of nationals, but very rarely for expatriates. After all, you were out of your own country to do a job expected by a foreign one. If you couldn't do it, the argument went, then go back to your own country. If I were paying the expatriate salaries commanded, I'd take that attitude, too.
 
Expatriate women were allowed to drive within only the oil company compounds, clivex, so we just battled for a space along with All Nations' males.

Saudi women are still not permitted to drive in their own country, but they're on every other country's roads - including the rest of the Gulf, Bahrain, Iran, etc. Every so often they raise the question (and nowadays it does get published!) that why is it more acceptable for them to have to be driven everywhere by a foreign chauffeur when/if their husband/brother/father isn't available - or take a bus? The public buses have seats at the back for ladies only, in the way our own trains once did. Of course, the official reply is that there's no law against them driving on religious grounds - I mean, how could there be? They used to ride donkeys and drive donkey carts, so what's the difference with a car? The platitude is that it's for their own safety. Expatriate women are also not permitted to drive outside the oil company compounds.

Eventually, the government will override the religious extremism that still calls the shots in cases like this. There's more and more pressure being brought by Saudi women as they assume more public jobs (they've always been allowed to own their own businesses, but that hasn't had much influence), and gain ministerial positions. In fact, I think it's probably on the cards, but the govenment has always allowed things to very slowly slip into place, almost by stealth, rather than announcing any sweeping social change. There'll be much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the type of male who sees his petty tyrant's base further eroded, of course! :D
 
Originally posted by Euronymous@Jan 16 2007, 11:59 PM
I couldn`t give two shits about the libel laws Warbs, the internet is a resource for ordinary people to air their views on whatever subjects (within reason) they feel.
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Just read this

You might not give two shits about libel laws but I do. I am the one who would be in court over this so, as I don't want to be, it stays off the forum and your warning was justified.

Feel free to set up your own forum for people to post libellous comments on if you feel that strongly, it won't last long.

Apart from the (small) risk of me ending up in court over it, if the person complained to my host and nominet this forum would cease to exist within minutes. Hosting companies and nominet do not like this type of thing and pull sites first, then ask questions later.

And I put Ardross and all the other moderators and admin in charge of warnings.
 
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