Hi, I (M17) started working at a factory as a part of an apprenticeship 10 months ago to the day. Today I was called into the office and was told my contract is being terminated due to my Bradford score, essentially a score of your attendance. My score was high and I didn’t understand why, every day I’ve had off I was either ill and / or was told to go home, or I had it pre-booked off. I argued against the termination and my boss said there was nothing he could do, even though there was, he was THE boss. It’s been a few hours since I left and my other coworkers felt awful, my mother has called in telling them it’s an unfair dismissal because I’ve not had any prior warnings about my attendance beforehand, which was apart of the letter they gave me.
I was off for 12 days total because of heat stroke, gastritis and a broken elbow, all separate occasions. I find it a miracle how little time I had off, this all happened since October 2023 and now it’s July 2024. They believe ‘it’s showing red flags’ which I could understand, even though it was my coworkers telling me to go home when I was ill and that SAME boss telling me I couldn’t go into work with my broken elbow.
I’ve had a rough few years and this job gave me exactly what I wanted, it gave me an open space with incredible coworkers, minimum wage for an apprenticeship (6.40 ph/ $8.13 ph for my Yankee bros), and a reason to keep going on, my boss didn’t care when I said that.
I’m super frustrated and confused, my mother has been spam calling my boss for the past hour and a half now and he’s dodging the answer button like it has Ebola.