What happens to a man erstwhile an employer stops answering questions and starts defending his own version of events?
For six years, I was part of a factory. Not the case number, not the ‘proclaimed employee’, not the female who can be described in a single word in individual files. I was human,
who came to work, performed duties, and believed that a public institution besides existed in order to comply with the rules he required of others.
Today, I fight this plant before the courts and the control authorities. The plant has documents, positions, lawyers and the ability to make an authoritative version of events. I've got a file, a bad health.
Workers' rights. Why is there fear in companies? How do we change that? Adriana Rozwadowska, Rafał Górski
The inequality of power does not begin in the courtroom. It starts much earlier: in an office where 1 organization makes a decision and the another 1 learns about it after the fact. In a procedure that formally exists but does not give the worker a real participation. In response, the institution assures that it has checked everything, although the man afraid inactive does not feel even heard.
First my positions and duties were changed. Tension, fear, and the feeling that the problem was not working conditions or management, but me. A man can convince himself for a long time that he's overreacting. possibly I'm besides sensitive. possibly I should effort harder. possibly everyone's got a hard time. possibly it's my responsibility that before I go to work, my body acts like it's expected to enter the battlefield.
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That's how the institution starts messing with the employee's head. He doesn't gotta tell him he's weak all day. After a while, a man does it for her. I reported problems concerning how I was treated, preparation for duties, safety and irregularities that, in my opinion, required a check. erstwhile the anti-mobbing procedure was launched, I thought naively that the procedure was utilized to find the truth. However, I was not invited to a committee gathering on my case.
This is simply a peculiar kind of administrative violence: the rules exist, the committee exists, the protocol most likely besides exists – only the individual who speaks of harm, as if there were no. The procedure becomes a decoration.
It is intended to show that the institution is responding, not necessarily to see what it should respond to properly.
Later came disciplinary dismissal – the hardest way to terminate the contract. That kind of paper doesn't just take jobs. He tries to take a reputation and impose on a man a fresh identity: a guilty, disloyal, untrustworthy. abruptly this institution does not gotta explain its actions. It's the worker who's expected to prove he's not what he was named in the writing.
Polish employers don't give a crap about signaling reports Joanna Kochaj-Dyrda, Max Fojtuch
Disputes about my dismissal, mobbing and discrimination will inactive admit the courts. I'm not going to replace my conviction with my own conviction. However, I know that external checks have shown weaknesses, and after the inspection, I have been paid the money due. I besides know that in separate proceedings experts have confirmed my inability to work. It doesn't settle all the disputes, but it storms a comfortable communicative that the individual reporting the problems just made it all up.
Institutions like to talk procedure. Man speaks the language of effect.
The institution will write: ‘not found’. A man will say, "I'm awake." The institution will write: ‘no grounds’. A man will say I'm afraid to open a mailbox. The institution shall indicate the number of the paragraph. A man will point to trembling hands.
Working law sometimes pretends to meet equal sides. On 1 side, however, there is an employer who knows the strategy from the inside, keeps records and uses legal services. Second, a individual who has just lost income, wellness and security. It is to respond timely, precise and emotionless, although at the same time it tries to support the household and itself.
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The public employer has another privilege: he defends himself for public money. An worker pays for his own defence with money he frequently no longer earns. The institution can wait. For a man all period means bills, treatment, and another night without answer. A time that for the office is simply a position in the calendar, for the citizen is simply a tool of pressure.
I could've pulled out. I could have thought that a large institution could not be won. That I have no position, no money, no appropriate education. That a single parent should take care of survival, not justice.
However, I began writing to the courts, inspections, control bodies and civilian rights institutions. Each letter was an effort to retrieve a part of its own voice.
Every consequence – even negative – at least confirmed that I be and that my version of events would not vanish just due to the fact that individual is uncomfortable with it. The most hard thing about a bet is not the number of documents. It's not even a trial or months of waiting. The hardest part is that you don't leave conflict after hours. You take him home. She's companions erstwhile she falls asleep. He's coming back at the phone. It appears in the body erstwhile a registered letter comes. The legal conflict takes place in court, but the second part takes place in the human tense system. The institution has hours of work. The injured individual has no hours free from his own memory.
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Sometimes I hear that I should let go – for peace. Then I ask, whose peace?
Not mine. Silence doesn't heal. Silence preserves the arrangement in which the worker is to be thankful that he has a job, and erstwhile he asks about rules, he becomes a problem to be removed.
I'm not fighting due to the fact that I like conflict. I'm fighting due to the fact that I want the papers to show the full thing, not just the version of the stronger side. I want to know if protective procedures truly defend people, or if they just look good in regulations. Whether supervision of a public entity means real control or exchange of letters. Whether an worker reporting irregularities is simply a origin of information or an immediate threat to the reputation of the institution.
My communicative isn't just 1 bet story. It is the past of a strategy in which a citizen has the right to lodge a complaint, but can pay health, work and years of life for exercising that right.
The state encourages reporting irregularities, but it cannot always defend a individual from loneliness, which starts the day after the notification.
This fight changed me. I'm inactive scared, but I've stopped considering fear as evidence of weakness. You can be afraid of court and get in the gym. You may not know the legal language and request the law. You can lose your position and regain the belief that your own voice is valuable.
I do not yet know how all proceedings will end, so I will not compose a comfortable finale on victory. actual stories seldom end in the right place and time. Mine's inactive on.
But I do know that the bet didn't get what any badly functioning institution needs: the silence of a man who thought he was besides tiny to ask questions.
I was an employee. Then I became an ex-employee, a organization to proceedings, and a number of subsequent cases. First of all, I'm inactive human. And as a man, I say check it out. Listen. Answer me.
(name for editor)
