I worked for a small family business in the UK, owned and ran by two brothers, with 10 staff.
One day a work colleague called to say he discovered his father's body slumped in his favorite chair that morning. The boss asked “Are you still coming into work?” when he was told no “What about tomorrow? Do you have enough holiday to cover?”
The factory unit got broken into so they set up cameras, pointing at the work area. They would check up on activity whilst out of the office / on holiday and phone us if they saw us not working. Illegal in the UK.
One of the brothers moaned at me because I had been gone for 7 minutes. “I went for a piss” was my offended reply, “For 7 minutes?” “Your lucky I didn't need a shit”
A colleague slipped on oil that had leaked from a sump, broke his nose as he fell forward, because it was out of view of the cctv, they refused to pay him while he took time off to get his nose attended to, he promptly handed in his notice and sued, getting an undisclosed figure, but it was enough for them to install MORE cameras.
Now our shift pattern was rather crazy, working from 8am on a Monday, but as each day went by the next shift would start 3 hours later, so by the end of the week we where working a late shift, into Saturday AM. By law we are entitled to a 48 hour break from work every 7 days, we actually managed to negotiate a financial benefit if we lost any time in that 48 hour window (essentially getting double time).
Any changes to our working hours had to be communicated with 7 days notice (contract), typically our hours would go up on the Friday afternoon, for the week starting the following Monday. We let this slide as our hours where pretty stable, but we got a new contract but the client was terribly unreliable, leading to a lot of downtime (overtime) as we waited for the work to arrive. The bosses assured us a new work schedule would be arranged and our hours posted on the notice board THURSDAY as they where both on holiday from the Friday. We'll the hours where not put up, we had the girls in the office get in touch with them and let them know we needed to know the new work schedule. No return messages.
At the time I was a single father, both children at school. I needed to know the work schedule so I could arrange child care. Saturday morning shift ended, no work schedule communicated to us, so I sent a simple email
“Where are our work hours, promised for Thursday? I have child care to arrange, this is bloody ridiculous”
Come Monday AM I was summoned to the office, both bosses red faced with rage. I was told I had “ruined thier holiday with my foul language” and handed me a pre written final notice, my record had been clean until now.
The following day I returned with a letter pointing out numerous breaches of contract and employment law over the disciplinary.
● had not given me notice of a disciplinary action
● had not given me the option to invite a witness
● had not assigned a third party to investigate the allegation
● where in violation of contract handing out hours with only a weekends notice, not 7 days
● where spying on staff in breach of privacy act
● had written my disciplinary notice before the legal cooling off period
● in no part of my email did I use derogatory language (bloody is not an offensive word in this context, it was born out of frustration)
I was then sheepishly informed my disciplinary would be removed from my file.
A few months later we lost a large contract so they asked for people to take voluntary redundancies, I snatched thier hand off. Paid my mortgage off and never looked back.