I got fired yesterday from a labor union after me and five of my coworkers complained about an abusive manager. One of our coworkers felt that he was being discriminated against and had evidence – so he was not let go. The rest of the four of us were fired or laid off mysteriously over the past few months.
This woman was horrible. She would regularly insult my work, yell at me, call me up at anytime (including late at night) to get me to do urgent work, and was actively trying to sabotage every project I had worked on. She told one of our coworkers that him not speaking english was unprofessional and told him that, if she were him, she would be taking english classes. She never offered praise or encouragement. All of her feedback was negative. She also talked poorly about everyone to other coworkers.
When I complained about her, asked for a new manager, and that I had not been doing the work that they originally put in my job description, I was initially told no. I thought I was hired to send out email blasts, text blasts, moderate online communities, set up ads to aquire new leads, and acquire new leads via social media marketing. Instead, they asked me to make phone calls all day. However, they did end up assigning me another manager and changing my work duties to reflect my job description. I did notice the new manager rarely gave me feedback – despite me asking for feedback – and that my workload was much lighter than it previously was.
I did my best to comply with everything the new manager asked of me – even when his instructions were unclear or when I didn't have the proper resources to do the job. I was never put on a Performance Improvement Plan or anything so I assumed everything was fine because I was performing to the best of my ability given the resources I was provided with.
Yesterday, I was told out of the blue that I was fired. Most of the reasons they provided in a letter were complaints by my former manager. There were two other reasons that they provided (that I didn't fly out for the job enough and that I didn't go to the office enough) – which were just misleading. I accepted every request to fly out to the main office, even when it meant getting up at 4am and I lived out of hotels for a full month when I first started because they had me travelling so much. When October started, I originally agreed to live out of hotels for the entire month but then my manager said it wasn't necessary. As far as the local office, I kept on telling my manager that that I wasn't set up to work properly there because I was either editing videos, on Zoom meetings, or making calls all day. I performed almost all of my job in a room by myself and one of the directors at our local office said that I was taking up that room too often and asked me to talk to my manager about just letting me work from home. I also regularly worked 14-16 hour days.
The worst part is that I had hundreds of conversations with workers telling them that our union would help them if they chose us. After how they fired me, I know the union wouldn't have their back. I feel like I lied to these people.
TLDR: I did everything this job asked of me – including living out of hotels for a month at a time and working 14-16 hour days. Me and 4 of my colleagues complained about a toxic manager. Over the next few months, we were all fired except for one colleague who had a documented instance of discrimination.