Let's not trivialize verbal abuse by calling it hurt feelings.
I'm not saying this level of seriousness is what happened here, but you exaggerate in the other direction.
What an employee says about their boss generally has zero implications on their career and lives, so long as it does not outright accuse them of a crime. When's the last time someone called you to provide a reference on your boss? I thought so.
In turn, what a boss says about their employees can be entirely career-ending and therefore life-altering, even if said in jest or later retracted. A higher standard exists precisely because the stakes are so much higher.
Even if you know the lines aren't blurred, if you perceive others acting as though it's up for debate, you're more likely to consider bad-faith appeals to the subjectivity of abuse as perhaps being in good faith. Few among us are philosophers capable of reasoning everything through from first principles, all the time, so these things matter.
Tone and body language are like 80%+ of in-person, verbal communication.
We need to be very careful to, as I mentioned, not “abuse” the term abuse to the point where it becomes meaningless. If everything is abuse, nothing is abuse, and we need to invent a new term.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, and find people who do take themselves seriously worthy of some extra piss taking to bring them down a peg.
(Oh, and rm -rf'ing your HD *would* land you in very serious legal trouble. It is a criminal act under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. And rightly so.)
As does some of the conduct that may lead to the counterparty calling you names in the heat of the moment.
You'll see plenty of it here on HN - some commenters are great at just staying within the guidelines while pushing others over the edge in frustration.
It's similar to probationary periods - you'll see a few people fired right at the three month mark but it's usually more of a case of giving that employee grace for the probationary period rather than accelerating a firing that'd happen later.
"Section 94 does not apply to the dismissal of an employee unless he has been continuously employed for a period of not less than two years ending with the effective date of termination"
Section 94 is the name of a section of the current law regarding the general idea of like, employing people, and that section says you can't unfairly dismiss them, so this sub-sub clause says that only applies after two years.
Edited to add: This stuff is easier to find in the UK because although it's legalese, the Westminster Parliament is obliged by its own rules to name laws after what they do, this is an employment law so I searched for "Employment". In the US it might be called the NICEHAT Act or Jim Smith's Law or some other useless nonsense because they have no such rule.
Persuading the tax man that the cleaners who in effect are your direct employees are "freelance" somehow and so you shouldn't have to pay the tax. Or claiming that the labourers you hired don't get paid from 0830 because they aren't "really" working until 0900 even though they're in a company minibus being driven to the worksite and this is the only way they could get there.
Neither of those things is legal here but both of them might happen and will only sometimes get reported and those responsible will get at worst a fine. If you tried anything like this shit with Sam who has a penthouse office in the City he'll summon a swarm of employment lawyers and ruin your life, but because Mateusz who cleans the toilets has dubious immigration status and he's behind on his rent he's probably not going to make a fuss when you steal from him this way. This sucks.
The problems are always at the very bottom. People who are closest to the poverty line, most easily replaceable, least easily able to organize and demand better and also most separated from those who have more freedom to demand change. One important angle unions think about is schemes to separate these low wages workers from colleagues who would be able to advocate for improvements. If the guy cleaning the toilets doesn't legally work for the same company as the guy who uses them, suddenly the question of whether "cleaning toilets" pays a living wage isn't a matter of employee solidarity...
Edited: Swapped Manhattan for the City (of London) because the topic is specifically UK employment
The actual judgement is a trip: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ae81ed8bc29... (these are her in-laws!!!)
Anyway, main point is that points 129 and 130 basically say 'you can't dismiss someone for calling their boss a dickhead', and then 134-136 say 'and even your own guidelines say so'.
Should bosses also get one free insult for their employees too? Obviously not.
That said I really don't think something like this warrants dismissal, unless it's a frequent problem. Obviously we shouldn't be going around and insulting each other for no reason, but are bosses really so fragile that they can't deal with a single instance of their subordinates being sorta mean to them and calling them names?
In all earnestness, without any malice, my American friend (who I'd worked with before and at TomTom) asked a group of co-workers if anybody wanted to be his guinea pig for some new software, and boy that didn't over well with the Italian guy! He profusely apologized and explained what he really meant by the term "my guinea pig", and things were just fine, plus he learned not to call Italians "guinea pigs" (with either the hard or soft "g").
That same friend eventually left the company for a much better offer, but later TomTom rehired him with a huge promotion and pay raise because they really loved his work and desperately needed him, and he was irreplaceable. He was rehired and promoted to CTO, and finally he was having dinner with a bunch of the TomTom founders and executives, including the CMO Corinne Vigreux and her husband the CEO Harold Goddijn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinne_Vigreux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Goddijn
Then Corinne Vigreux said something blatantly transphobic, which she obviously meant as a slur (unlike his "guinea pig" faux pas that he immediately apologized for), so he called her on it, and she would not take it back or apologize, and that incident led to him suddenly leaving the company.
That was after TomTom spent huge amounts of money to initially recruit, then later rehire and retain him, he designed and implemented key parts of their infrastructure, and they even prominently featured him in many of their recruiting videos and magazine articles and LinkedIn posts, saying how much he liked working there -- many of them are still online at TomTom's recruiting web site!
But thanks to the inherent power imbalance, her executive level privilege, and the nepotistic advantage of being married to the CEO, she got away with it scott free, and they hushed up the reason he left).
He lost his dream job, and everyone else was left wondering why he suddenly disappeared for no apparent reason, after being so pleasant to work with, performing so well, and being so frequently exploited as a recruiting spokesperson, and interviewed as a representative of the company. (I am not exaggerating that if you google tomtom + his name you get pages of unique interviews and articles over many years.)
Corinne Vigreux drove him out of his job for speaking out against her intentional slur, when she clearly said and meant it in front of several other people, when she's the one who should have been reported to HR and punished for what she said, not him.
Over many years, TomTom spent a LOT of money recruiting, relocating, then re-recruiting him, they loved his work. I originally recruited him by introducing and recommending him to executives, managers, and HR. I still have the enthusiastic emails I sent with and about him, which they acted on by giving him an offer he couldn't refuse and relocating him. I never got any recruiting bonus, since I was a contractor at the time I recruited him. I just wanted the opportunity to work with him again, and cherished the opportunity to get the old band back together in Amsterdam.
The manager I recommended him to, who hired him and worked closely with him, was shocked and dismayed to hear about the actual reason he suddenly left. Especially because the company culture as a whole is definitely not transphobic, and I know current employees with trans children who were also quite shocked to hear about Corinne Vigreux's bigotry. TomTom certainly gives a lot of lip service to inclusivity on their web site.
Introducing the LGBTQIA+ Committee: How TomTom is empowering inclusive action:
https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/life-at-tomtom/how-tomtom-is...
But after the derogatory transphobic bullshit Corinne Vigreux said in front of witnesses, which was clearly in violation of company policy, culture, scientific facts, and just plain human decency, I believe she morally owes TomTom a refund of all the money they spent recruiting and relocating and hiring him twice, as well as all the money they had to spend replacing him.
Because she can CERTAINLY afford it. She might even learn to keep her bigoted mouth shut and transphobic opinions to herself, or grow some thicker skin if she can't bring herself to be do that, merely being polite and respectful to her own employees, instead of being bigoted and vengeful. And not to be so blatant about taking advantage of her nepotism and exploiting the power imbalance and her husband.
Not just because of all of TomTom's money and reputation she burnt at the altar of her ugly bigoted vanity, but because of how difficult her bigotry and nepotism make it for TomTom to recruit and retain good people: a problem she recognizes and publicly talks about herself. The transphobia's one thing, but losing high level talented employees because they stand up to transphobia or any kind of bigotry is much more systemically worse, and should be actionable by HR.
Navigating decline: what happened to TomTom?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/21/navigating-...
>In fact, she thinks, the lack of talented staff is “the biggest issue most organisations are facing. You have to fish in a bigger pond to fill those gaps. So of course you should look at women too”.
Apparently not trans women, nor people who stand up to her transphobic bigotry either.
TomTom certainly hasn't been doing well under HER leadership (just google the ill-fated sports watches and "TomTom Bandit" that you've probably never heard of -- maybe the product name was too honest about the cost of its subscription service).
Bandit Studio & Bandit apps discontinued:
https://help.tomtom.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360017291459-Bandi...
But being married to the CEO has its nepotistic advantages, like being able to say whatever she wants in front of everyone, and then get rid of anyone who has the guts to stand up to her and call her out on her bigotry.
A workplace where no one swears, ever, sounds shit.
"Not calling someone a dickhead" should not take constant cognitive load or feel like "playing minesweeper" all day.
The fuck it is. There is a while bunch of preconditions that need to be met first. (for example, if you're working as a teacher, its probably unproffesh, but as an engineer[a real one, not a software engineer], you need to call a spade a spade.)
You can't have "professionalism" as a mask to allow abuse or general degrading treatment at work.
crucially the person in question used dickheads non-pejoratively, it wasn't an insult. However the employer didn't follow procedure either.
Personally, I've never worked anywhere in Blighty where giving and accepting piss taking and creative insults isn't the norm. Anybody offended by this will be politely told to develop a sense of humour (of the type spelt with a 'u').
If their employment contract requires it, sure. This worker's contract guaranteed them a warning in this scenario. They are protected by that legally binding contract. That's the entire point of it.
Even outside a contract, consequences for actions should be proportional to the harm of those actions. "You called me a mild insult in the heat of the moment after years of productive employment, so I'm removing your livelihood" is not.
The sections you quoted don't support this statement. The quoted statements highlight contractual clauses which include "excessive" foul language which one instance of calling someone a dickhead does not approach. The only point a single instance of swearing could be grounds for dismissal were against a customer, which is specifically highlighted in the contract.
Were the contract to include a clause of "you will not swear at other employees," then that would have been sufficient. Now, whether that falls foul of the Equality Act (due to discriminatory treatment) is a different question. You can't extrapolate any result of that from this case, however.
That part of the ruling is independent of the company policies.
Although apparently they did actually try to pay her for her notice period and she sent it back? This case is a whole load of fun to read through.
It’s actually not against the Equality Act to treat employees differently, as long as you don’t do it because of a protected characteristic.
You might even be able to have something generic like "verbal abuse" but then you have to be careful that it might be turned on the bosses and cause another type of lawsuit.
That’s why I don’t see these rulings as a win for the common employee. The situation now encourages companies to be as broad as possible with their contracts and policies and include so many just-in-case provisions that it starts to get hard for anyone to know and follow all of them.
No, they aren't because that's not how contracts or the law work in the UK. The court found that the contract enumerated a long list of breaches of contract, of which "swearing at colleagues" was not in that list. This means the court read the list as exhaustive, because it appeared to be exhaustive.
If the contract was worded differently, the court may not have used this interpretive rule. If the wording was a little more broad, the court may have worked to determine whether "swearing at your boss" could reasonably fit into the terms.
Yes, and that's why I said HR and Legal are updating their boilerplate to be more exhaustive.
I'm saying they're going to update the contracts to match the labor laws.
If the labor laws say you have to have fireable offenses explicitly enumerated, contracts will now have a lot of fireable offenses explicitly enumerated. That's not evading the law, that's literally how you comply with the law.
They don't, nor does this decision.
The company simply didn't follow the rules of the employment contract, which both parties had agreed to.
No they're not. This ruling makes no difference to the legal, employment or contractual landscape of the UK. Reading the ruling, it was resolved in exactly the way any competent HR lawyer would expect. The employer was bang out of order and was rightly slapped down by the court.
> If the labor laws say you have to have fireable offenses explicitly enumerated
No they don't. As others have pointed out: the ruling flags that the contract itself enumerates gross misconduct offences. Some of which include "excessive swearing" or "swearing at customers." Given the context of what the contract does enumerate, the court found that the contract does not consider this, obviously, lesser misconduct was out of scope of gross misconduct, as per the terms of the contract.
If the contract did not include such a specific list, but merely described a more broad category of things that are considered gross misconduct, then the court might have ruled differently.
In this case, all they had to do was issue a warning - as they promosed to do in the contract - instead of a summary firing for the first offense. If the behavior reoccurred they'd have been clear.
We're literally reading an example of someone being protected by laws and your response is "well this is actually bad for them"?
If you want to fire someone you follow procedure. In this case they didn't follow procedure. This is exactly the sort of situation HR already despairs over.
Writing new HR documents can't fix this, the same way that bolding the text "Do not press this button" in the instruction manual will not stop customers who don't read the manual and then press the button from doing so.
This also just obviously isn't gross misconduct. So now your rewritten procedures might get you sued which (checks notes) is the opposite of what you wanted.
have you read any of your company's policys recently?
at one company I could be technically fired for wearing a tracksuit to work.
at a FAANG, one that was very famous for upholding "freedom of expression", could fire me for questioning _in private_ the direction of anyone more senior than me.
Even if those policies are broad and all encompassing, you still need to demonstrate that they were applied correctly, proportionally and reasonably.
You also need to prove that the _policy_ is reasonable as well.
for example you _could_ have a policy where you cannot say anything negative. Good luck trying to prove that its legally reasonable (and that it was applied evenly)
> However, this required she be given a prior warning. Only more serious breaches such as “threatening and intimidating language” would be gross misconduct and warrant summary dismissal.
It seems like the prior warning is the necessary part. The company obviously wants to write the rules such that the upper management team can make a one-off stupid comment to an employee without the employee suing to get them fired. Unfortunately, this means the upper management team can't rage-fire someone with no thought. (No doubt to show how in charge and powerful they are, which kind of proves the person using the term "dickhead" right.)
That's just going to lead to a lawsuit on the definition of "verbal abuse".
> A quick update to the procedures that calling someone a dickhead is a fireable offense is all that is needed.
Even specifically stating that might not work. It is not uncommon for such clauses to be struck through in court if they are deemed unfair and disproportionally punitive to the employee.
For a regular office drone otherwise in good standing, given the UK's cultural context, getting fired for calling your boss a "dickhead" is an extremely harsh punishment. An official warning, improvement plan, or some kind of training would be more appropriate.
I think trying to fire someone based on that rather than addressing whatever conflict or friction lead to the “name calling” is an example of bad management.
Telling someone to fuck off could be verbal abuse, as fuck is a verb. But in this case it was not the purely figurative suggestion to fuck off was the britishism meaning to please leave with haste.
Saying "You're a dickhead" is verbal abuse. Saying "Dickhead" alone is nounal abuse.
Nope, needs to be reasonable. If you're doing something unusual, then it needs to be telegraphed and backed up so that if you are taken to court you can give evidence as to why that clause was needed.
> have something generic like "verbal abuse"
you would need to have a policy that defines what verbal abuse is, and a way to record and catagorise it. its also a hard task to prove that one instance of verbal abuse where using "dickhead" as a term of endearment without any other connotations (sexual or otherwise) is gross misconduct, especially as the reply was "you can fuck off"
Dickhead is really quite a mild insult.
They could use neutral a×hole, without sexual assault!
Also even just calling someone a dick is much ruder than a dickhead. In my mind at least.
Dickhead is quite throwaway.
The ruling holds that business process is not only legally binding, but trump's the terms for dismissal in the employment contract.
No, it doesn't. The business process was part of the legally binding contract.
> The hearing was told that under the terms of her contract, she could be fired for “the provocative use of insulting or abusive language”. However, this required she be given a prior warning. Only more serious breaches such as “threatening and intimidating language” would be gross misconduct and warrant summary dismissal.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ae81ed8bc29...
> Section 15 and 16 of the contract deal with disciplinary rules and unsatisfactory work and misconduct. Sections 18, 19 and 20 specify the respondent’s disciplinary procedures. Section 21 details the appeals procedure. The grievance procedure and grievance appeal procedure are laid out at section 22.
> At section 16 there is a list of the type of conduct or unsatisfactory work that may lead to dismissal after a prior warning has been given. There is a non exhaustive list of examples which include negligence, carelessness or general lack of capability in performance of the employees duties, bad timekeeping and the provocative use of insulting or abusive language.
You fire one person for calling their boss a dickhead, you’d better be sure you never allowed someone on the same contract to call their boss a dickhead without being fired.
Forgiving a fireable offense in one case doesn't mean every case must be forgiven.
Of course, you could argue that being allowed to fire people for pretty much anything other than discrimination makes it an uphill battle to prove it if you were fired illegally, but I'm not attempting to make a defense of the system, just explain my understanding of it.
The topic is flexibility in hiring/ firing decisions and whether this flexibility is a good or bad thing overall. The empirical data between US and Europe - where the US has much higher wages and generally lower unemployment - suggests but does not prove this flexibility contributes to a better overall job market. In the US employers may be quicker to fire you, but they are also quicker to hire you.
Personally, as an employee I like the flexibility. If I do a good job, it’s rare to get fired, and I have more ability to jump ship if don’t like my current job.
This is a complete non-issue in presumably the entire EU (I can only speak for the Netherlands personally, but it's a safe bet except for perhaps Germany)? You can't get fired for literally no reason like in the US, but you can terminate your contract at any time you want with usually 1 month notice. I've literally never encountered any job where it was more than 1 month's notice unless they were very, very high up the food chain like Principal Engineer or VP level, and at that level it's presumably similarly difficult to leave even in the US.
I've actually just quit my job at the start of this month, and I had 16 paid vacation days leftover, so I'll be working for less than half the month before starting my next role. Sure seems like a lot of ability to jump ship to me.
And getting hired hasn't felt harder or more complicated for me than my experience for US companies. Interview processes are the same, you get hired ASAP with companies understanding there's notice periods before you can start working, For the businesses there's a 1-3 month probationary period where you can be let go (most common is 1 month) for no reason, and it's also not like it's impossible to get rid of truly bad performers either, there's just rules in place to make sure companies don't fuck over their employee's lives on a whim. They have to actually prove someone is a detriment to the team, shock horror, in order to fire them.
The alternative in the US for the majority of people not working in big tech for big tech salaries is that the fear of getting fired at any moment in time constantly looms over your head. You're always 1 power-trip away from getting fired by some egotistical dickhead, on top of already having much poorer worker protections, not to mention the state of US healthcare and the fear people have there.
Me? I have a permanent contract and can live safely in the knowledge that if they want to get rid of me unfairly, it'll cost them big time, and even if that happens I know I don't have to stress about ending up in medical debt for the remainder of my natural life should something unfortunate befall me or my loved ones.
You can't fire someone without process. The ruling is that this wasn't "gross misconduct", and proper procedure for dealing with the behaviour should have been followed.
So before someone comes in claiming the UK to be an unruly anarchy, if you go around dissing the boss or your company then you'll still find yourself facing disciplinary action and could be eventually sacked, just not on the spot!