> My mother is a highly experienced engineer, and she earns quite a lot of 
> money.

She should be in a favourable position to move jobs then, plenty of 
professional older workers move companies, and don't believe all the hype 
about there being no jobs at the moment - monster sends me about 10-20 new 
jobs every day for quite a narrow area of engineering.

> We're not talking about one manager with a power complex. We're talking 
> about a systematic plan to save the company money by pushing people out 
> the door on the cheap.

A lot of companies have been doing that recently, she shouldn't feel it's 
anything personal against her.

> The company, of course, will claim that the people standing over my 
> mother, constantly watching her, constantly having a go at her, is all 
> part of a "constructive program of continuous employee training and 
> development" and that they're not bullying her at all. I don't know - if 
> you can see that an employee is stressed out, would you spend 20 minutes 
> screaming at them at the top of your voice? Does that sound constructive 
> to you?

No, it sounds like she should make a complaint.  At the very least she 
should be recording all such incidents.

> I don't really know what the right course of action here is. But certainly 
> this kind of behaviour is unacceptable, and should not be legal.

There are plenty of avenues to take when making complaints.  I would do it 
internally first, if it's a large company it will definitely have an 
internal procedure which should probably follow first.  If that bears no 
fruit then there are plenty of external options, like tribunals and even 
going to court.

Post a reply to this message