I think for everyone to understand my situation, I need to explain the current situation first. I try to explain it as best as I can, but english is not my mother tongue and some technical terms I don't know in english.
I work as a social worker for a muncipality. I started working there 1.5 years ago and got recruited by a friend that works there. At first everything seemed fine, although I could see cracks in the wall. After 3 months they slammed down the hammer and announced, that the municipality is in debt and they need to save money. So they plan to change our government contracts and redact all benefits, set the working conditions to the absolute bare minimum that is legally allowed and just generally piss everyone off. This is still in the making and needs to be approved by the muncipality council first.
Our CEO is commonly known as a narcississt with a borderline disorder. He has a bad habit of being vengeful, keeping “tab” on people who wrong him and attack people personally in 1 to 1 talks. My Teamleader and my Branch Manager have already quit because of him. My coworker had to cry during the last discussion with him and wants to leave as well. Everyone else is scared shitless of him at this point and noone dares to oppose him.
At the end of 2021 i had my yearly employee qualifications (Mitarbeitergespräch) and got the rating “very good”, which would have lead to a double increase in salary given my government contract. The HR and CEO were not happy with that and complained to my branch manager, who was about to have her last day at work mid January. My branch manager sent in two written statements to confirm, that the rating was correct. But we never heard back from HR or the CEO. 1 day after the last day of my branch manager I get a letter saying, that they downgrade my employee qualification to just “good” because they assume, it was only a favour of my former boss. They didn't provide any other proof or reasoning behind it.
After some research I figured out, that they downgraded it without following the proper protocols. Here is where it gets technical:
What they did is: They downgraded it and sent the new rating to the muncipality council, which then granted me the salary increase for the rating of only “good”
I talked with the muncipality council members and they didn't even know, that there was another rating before that.
What the CEO should have done is: write a written request to branch manager to explain herself, gather the statement and then write a statement of his own and send all of that together with my original employee qualification to the muncipality council and they would decide if it gets downgraded.
So after the CEO made my coworker cry over the same issue by verbally attacking her, gaslighting her and putting her down I decided it is my turn now.
I confronted him about it and demanded a written statement as to why he didn't follow proper channels and if he can prove that it was only a favour of my old boss.
So far I haven't gotten a reply. But I expect the fallout to be quite severe, given his track record of insulting people to the point where they consider taking legal actions. Sadly he is not stupid and only does this behind closed doors and never in writing so noone can prove he did it.
The result so far has been, that my motivation to work has plummeted and I basically only work bare minimum at the moment. I guess you get what you pay for? I really busted my ass last year and did way more than what was expected from me and in return I get kicked down by management when it comes to showing respect and that they value my work.
I'll keep you guys updated as soon as I know more