In the workplace, as indeed in life, there are a number of situations that have both an ‘in theory’ and an ‘in practice’ answer.
If you feel that your boss is treating you unfairly, this is one such situation. You will be able to find all sorts of employment law advice, but what we are looking to provide in this article is the real life solution.
It may sound wrong to suggest that the ‘official’ employment law advice is not applicable, because it is a good idea to understand your rights in the workplace. However, let us look at the ways in which you can either solve or minimise the problem before you go through official means.
If you work for a large company with strict human resources practices and a respect for operating under the exact rules of employment law, you may find that you are able to go through the official channels. However, if you work for a smaller organisation, while you may be legally entitled to make a complaint or ask for a review of the situation, in practice this may just make it difficult to stay in your job.
Large Company
Larger organisations tend to have the resources to be able to respond to human resources issues in a more regulated manner. Not only this, but it is expected that you follow these regulations and so your complaint or concerns are given the treatment they require.
You will be expected to speak to your HR manager in an honest and open way, allowing you to explain how and why you feel as though your boss is treating you unfairly. Your HR manager will then deal with the situation, perhaps with a senior manager and it will be closely monitored.
If you do not feel your personal situation is problematic enough to involve your HR department but you require some changes to the behaviour of your boss and their treatment of you, you could arrange a less formal meeting. Be clear about why you feel your boss is treating you unfairly – it can be easy to look for someone else’s behaviour in a situation when perhaps we should modify our own.
Once you are able to define and illustrate, with clear examples, why you feel as you do, ask to have a chat with your boss. You may ask a trusted colleague to be present, although this makes the chat less informal and more of a meeting. Explain to your boss how you feel, say how it is affecting your work and your confidence. Detail what you would like to change, within reason, and ask for their views.
Your situation may be slightly different. ask a question below ↓ and our editorial team will reply with our advice.
Smaller Company
In a smaller operation there is unlikely to be the same infrastructure available, so complaints and criticisms rarely have a third party mediator, such as an HR manager.
In order to deal with your situation effectively and without making your difficulty with your boss more of a problem than it needs to be, you should be very clear about why you feel they are treating you unfairly. Think about your job and how well you have been performing before you say anything. It may be that you can see how you can modify your own behaviour before speaking to your boss.
If the problem is more serious than you feel able to cope with, it is important that you do bring the matter to your boss’s attention.
I was.asked to try to do 4 x12 hour shifts. which I was a bit reluctant to do but they said they were keen to employ me and if I tried it for a few weeks and it gave me problems then they would drop me one day. This job is really strenuous.and includes hoisting people who are over 20stone. I have tried to 4 weeks to keep going but it's becoming increasingly hard to continue doing these shifts. I emailed the manager and said that the old.manager agreed to me dropping a day. She has totally ignored my email even watching me struggle and refusing to help me leaving me to hoist and turn these people up to 8 times a day. We are regularly under staffed and have to meet the target of everyone out of bed before 11am but with indedstaffi g it's sometimes impossible. Today I was in sojch pain I forgot.to do something and my.mangef had.me in the office I tried.to explain that the pain is awful and I'm struggling but she totally disregarded it. I have since found out she has given the same job as I do to someone else and allowed them to drop their hours significantly from 4x12 hour shifts to 3x6 hour shifts. And another doing the same job as me permission to start work 1 hour later each day. I have only worked there 4 months and still in my probation tonight my back gave way I am sat here in tears.in agony. I was totally upfront at interview with them about my conditiond. I work hard sometimes through breaks short staffed and my manager avoids me like then plague yet her pets she gives anything to. There is no person in my line of work who doesn't suffer from joint problems. I feel like she's setting me up for a fall as I reported her for speaking about another client to another family who had nothing to do with them and I felt it was breaking confidentiality. I just feel like I'm being singled out by her. I'm even thinking of bringing the union rep in.
I have a investigating meeting next week with my Manager, HR Team, and the Shop Steward, due to a injury on duty and an unfairly treatment;
Kindly read the below email and understand how it happened and please give me feedback on how to handle or answer the questions they might make.
Hope you are all well;
Just to introduce the issue on the subject;
This case arises out of a forklift accident which occurred at JNB GTW on the 20th of December involving myself as a victim of a forklift hit when I was working on a PM shift reporting to Mark Hank as my Duty Manager at that particular month.
The accident happened when I was about to lodge a KQ container which had approximately ±500Kg for a flight KQ0765 containing parcels/shipments of the destinations Kenya-NBO, Uganda-EBB and Tanzania-DAR respectively that I prepared that day.
It was about 21hrs40 when I closed and shrink wrapped the container and pushed to the outbound skid and loaded on a slave pallet that weighs approximately ±200Kg which was inserted on a 5 ton forklift to take the container and lodge at swissport warehouse in order to be loaded at the airline and be uplifted at midnight to the final destination.
Few minutes before the accident, I had spoken to my colleague who was about to operate the forklift and I asked him to borrow me the forklift before he could go to the dolly and fetch the inbound EK container that was brought from the airline and placed outside the warehouse premises; He refused/denied to borrow me the forklift claiming that he needed to fetch the container ASAP and He would borrow me afterwards, then he left with the forklift and went to fetch the container even though I had told him that my cut off time was due and I had to take the container before I could be offloaded by the airline due to late lodging.
When He returned with the forklift, He positioned the 5 ton forklift together with the slave pallet weighing approximately ±200Kg and approximately ±500Kg container loaded with parcels/shipments towards the outbound roller band when I immediately pushed and placed the container on the sliding slave pallet, afterwards I took two steps down the outbound roller band to reach the forklift after my colleague got off, and as I was about to climb the forklift the same reversed and ran over and caught my right foot causing it to be swollen and stiff where I couldn't even fell it and simultaneously hit and pierced my left leg with the frame of the mast of the forklift causing a hole where I could see white bare skin tissue causing a severe bleeding, therefore I practically believe that my colleague failed to apply the hand brake in order to prevent this accident.
At that moment the right front tire of the forklift was on top of my right foot, I immediately screamed so that my colleague could help me and remove the forklift from my right foot, and as I stood with all that heaviness of the forklift, slave pallet, equip
I am leaving home at 5.30am, and not getting home until 8.15pm, because of bus travel times. I have once had to walk three miles back to a point with more regular evening buses, because the last bus from the area I work in went straight past me and another individual, even though we were both flagging it down, and both at the bus stop, and I have been involved in accidents twice, walking along the unlit, unpavemented road from my office to the bus stop. I am also, in order to meet my hours requirement at the office, working without breaks - I use computers exclusively, and am literally working 8.5hrs a day with no breaks. By the time I get home, I am frequently too tired to eat, and will just go straight to bed. My wife is disabled, and is becoming stressed at having to try and manage on her own (she has mild cerebral palsy and Asperger's, and was refused PIP, so can't hire a carer to support her while I'm at work, she is not deemed to need funded care, and the reason I had to give up freelance work and look for corporate employment was that she was becoming extremely anxious about a transfer from ESA to Universal Credit, to the point of saying it would be better if she killed herself, because "at least then they can't screw us over by saying I'm not really disabled."
I have asked my line manager if I could work from home, and was told "we'll discuss that another time". At an informal meeting with the HR manager - a routine thing she does with all new hires in the first few weeks - she actually raised the question of how I was managing with the commute. I explained about not being able to take breaks, and that it would be easier if I could work from home part time
pls. advise can this be unfair treatment?
I've been offered a new job out of this company and now looking to take legal action
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