All the news that's good to beat with a large stick until it dies horribly.

[denny]

Dunno where that title came from, my fingers started moving before my brain did. Anyway.

I went out to the shopping centre this afternoon to try and find a book someone recommended in my recent bookshelf meme post. Wasn't at any of the bookshops I tried, so I had to order it (10 pounds? 10 bloody pounds for a paperback? No wonder no-one reads any more). Of course, it's impossible to wander around several bookstores without getting mugged by things you had no intention of buying until you saw them, so I'm now 6 books up and £20 down, not counting the one on order.

Went in McDonalds to get a snack while I was in the shopping centre. My right crutch slipped on the wet floor and I had to use the broken leg to prevent myself falling over. I'm very glad to say that this episode scared me a lot more than it hurt me - the impact of landing on the bad leg was actually more like a very strong stab of pins and needles and less like it felt when I lent on it the weekend after my birthday (i.e. agonising). I guess it's getting better.

Today's extensive hopping around on crutches appears to have given me a blister in the palm of my hand. Hopefully the hilarity this will cause will be slightly tempered by the fact that it's my left hand. :)

Arriving back home, I've just opened my mail and found that I've been made redundant. The slimy bastards I used to work for have actually laid me off while I'm off sick. Charming. If anyone knows of any interesting jobs (even short term contracts etc) for a perl/linux hacker, please do let me know... stuff I can do from home would be particularly welcome over the next month or two.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Have you been made redundant, or dismissed?

If you've been made redundant, keep your eyes open - if they start advertising your substantive post, you can take them to a tribunal as clearly the role is not 'redundant'.

If you've been dismissed, the DTI says that a tribunal would "expect the employer to have discussed the position with the employee concerned and to be absolutely sure of the facts about the employee's state of health and whether he or she is incapable of doing his or her job, or likely to be persistently absent in the future. This may involve taking medical advice about the employee's condition by talking, with the employee's permission, to his or her doctor."

So basically they would be required to give evidence that they knew the details of your condition and when you were expected to return to full or part duties, and if you were likely to be persistently off sick in the future because of the injury.

There's also the issue of whether the injury constitutes a disability, which is defined as "a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on (a person's) ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities". An employer would be bound by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to prove that they had a relevant and substantive reason not to continue your employment and (if they have more than 15 employees) to prove that they had taken reasonable steps to allow you to continue work, including offering part-time, jobshare or work-from-home arrangements or altering workplace access.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

It's definitely redundancy. Good idea about keeping an eye out for them re-advertising the job... although afaik they only ever use agencies, so I'm not likely to see any advertising in papers etc, and agencies aren't likely to contact an ex-employee about a role at a company without running it past the company first.

I emailed them recently with a tentative set of enquiries about 'back to work' working conditions for me (asking whether I could do half-days at first, and if it would be possible to work mostly from home for a while), and that seemed to be what set the ball rolling with regard to them getting rid of me. I don't think anything in that would be their reason for kicking me out though, I think it just reminded them that I existed.