In countries with worker rights protections, there tend to be worker unions which reach common agreements with encoded pay raises (“or else” in the form of strikes), while worker discrimination is either directly punishable, or grounds to nullify a dismissal. There are plenty of bosses with precisely “half a brain”, who’ve discovered the hard way that it would’ve been cheaper to just pay the severance and be done with it.
Then of course you have places with “at will employment”, or more feudal-like structures. Not sure where Australia falls along those lines.
I think, you completely misunderstand how jobs work for most people.
Your direct boss most likely can’t fire you directly, but they assign you work. There’s tons of boring, mind numbing work nobody wants to do. Guess who just volunteered for that? Same is true for shift planning. Just assigning you the shitty shifts nobody wants to do is perfectly legal. Even just completely ignoring you as a person is possible, and will grind you down.
You won’t get a union to go on strike for that. And where is it (legally!) discrimination? Someone has to do the shift, after all!
You can rave about unions and laws all you want, but being an asshole is not illegal, so if your boss acts like one, there’s nothing you can do.
I know how jobs work, including to the point of requiring an employee to sit out their hours staring at a wall with nothing to do.
What I also know, is that whatever contract you signed, along with any labor laws, is the rule. If you get asked anything outside of your contract (think thrice before signing one), or against the union agreement, or in contradiction with labor laws, your boss can go pound sand.
being an asshole is not illegal
Depending on where you live, and how much of an asshole, it can be deemed illegal workplace abuse.
There are also other means: right now in Spain, we have a case where the chief of the maternity ER of a hospital got dismissed for abusive behavior… he sued and won, getting readmitted… which subsequently made every worker in the ER take a sick leave, grinding the ER to a halt. Just today, news came out that he’s been fired. So much for legally being an asshole.
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In countries with worker rights protections, there tend to be worker unions which reach common agreements with encoded pay raises (“or else” in the form of strikes), while worker discrimination is either directly punishable, or grounds to nullify a dismissal. There are plenty of bosses with precisely “half a brain”, who’ve discovered the hard way that it would’ve been cheaper to just pay the severance and be done with it.
Then of course you have places with “at will employment”, or more feudal-like structures. Not sure where Australia falls along those lines.
I think, you completely misunderstand how jobs work for most people.
Your direct boss most likely can’t fire you directly, but they assign you work. There’s tons of boring, mind numbing work nobody wants to do. Guess who just volunteered for that? Same is true for shift planning. Just assigning you the shitty shifts nobody wants to do is perfectly legal. Even just completely ignoring you as a person is possible, and will grind you down.
You won’t get a union to go on strike for that. And where is it (legally!) discrimination? Someone has to do the shift, after all!
You can rave about unions and laws all you want, but being an asshole is not illegal, so if your boss acts like one, there’s nothing you can do.
I know how jobs work, including to the point of requiring an employee to sit out their hours staring at a wall with nothing to do.
What I also know, is that whatever contract you signed, along with any labor laws, is the rule. If you get asked anything outside of your contract (think thrice before signing one), or against the union agreement, or in contradiction with labor laws, your boss can go pound sand.
Depending on where you live, and how much of an asshole, it can be deemed illegal workplace abuse.
There are also other means: right now in Spain, we have a case where the chief of the maternity ER of a hospital got dismissed for abusive behavior… he sued and won, getting readmitted… which subsequently made every worker in the ER take a sick leave, grinding the ER to a halt. Just today, news came out that he’s been fired. So much for legally being an asshole.