Published on 12, July, 2020
Good afternoon my fellow aspies.
I would like to speak to you all regarding something that i feel very passionately about.
This would be the impact that Autism can have in the work place on a social level.
I personally have experienced a great deal of friction in this area and it has had a significant impact on my well being. These difficulties have been ignored by my employer. This is an absurdity to me as it was my employer that paid for my diagnosis. The truth is that i would never have pursued a diagnosis had it not been for the impact that my Autistic Spectrum Disorder (commonly known as Aspergers) has on my day to day working life.
The difficulties i experience are many but the issue i would like to focus on in particular are the social issues. In a nut shell 'i am come across as arrogant, aloof and lack a sense of hierarchy'. Throughout my working life i beleive this has made me a target for bullying and harassment in the work place. It has caused me to leave a number of jobs (admittedly i had not received my formal diagnosis at these times).
For various reasons not dissimilar to those that have materialised in other jobs, i am now in dispute with my current employer. The difference here is that i have had my diagnosis and this was paid for by my current employer. Bizarrely my employer is now denying my disability even though they paid for the diagnosis.
What i have found utterly shocking however throughout this situation is not simply the ignorance of my employer. It is also my experience with the organisation we all know as ACAS. This is an organisation i turned to in the hope that they would assist me in resolving issues with my current employer. How wrong i was. To any of you that experience issues in the work place; please be careful when dealing with this organisation.
It is my understanding that this organisation is supposed to be impartial. My experience so far has shown to me that they are entirely biased in favour of the employer. Their involvement has also perversely affected the behavior of my employer also.
I informed my conciliator that i had Autistic Spectrum Disorder from the outset of their involvement. I offered to have someone from the NHS explain to her what the condition was. She was dismissive of the offer and claimed she knew exactly what it was. From this point onward i felt that she didnt take me seriously at all.
I do not want to go into to much detail about this case at the moment but i would say that she advised me to agree to all of my employers demands, was reluctant to communicate with me and at one stage told me 'i was paranoid, should go see my cousellor and should go for a walk to clear my head'.
I made a request to see her line manager and had to wait until the last day of the allocated conciliation time frame to speak to him. When i did speak to him, he explained to me that he was responsible for giving out Autism Awareness training to his staff. For a split second i found this comforting; that was until he then proceeded to tell me how autism and aspergers where to separate conditions. As i underdtand it, aspergers technically doesn't exist when it comes to DSM5 criteria. Correct me if im wrong.
Further to this, someone at ACAS has informed my employer that i had made a complaint (which i am certain breaches data protection laws). They have also told my employer that everything they have done (with regards to myself) will stand up to any 3rd party scrutiny. This beggars belief for me for the following reasons:-
1. They are supposed to be impartial.
2. They are not supposed to give legal advice.
3. They are not qualified to give legal advice.
4. How can they know what is correct regarding my treatment if they themselves are not properly educated on my condition.
I have since been in contact with a long lost school friend and amazingly he has recently been diagnosed and is experiencing similar social issues in the work place. He has told me that his experience with ACAS has been equally troubling.
What on earth is this organisation? Am i correct in assuming that as an arm of the government, this organisation should be subject to statutory guidance as set out in the 2009 autism strategy? If you have work issues and feel you have to turn to this organisation, i urge you to be very wary of them.
It is not clear to me what part of Acas is giving you advice and 'help'.
The first part of any dispute should be your employers grievance procedure. If this doesn't settle the matter or if things are dragging out without an outcome (and less than three months minus one day from the event that caused the dispute) you can seek Early Conciliation. The dispute in this case would be when you asked for 'reasonable adjustments' that weren't forthcoming or when you informed your employer that you considered yourself disabled under the Equality Act 2010 and your Employer rejected this. Your grievance should have stated the grounds for the grievance and how you would like the matter resolved. You will have to study the grievance policy and procedure. Also your employer should have an Equalities policy and stress policy, study these in combination.
If Early Conciliation is not successful, the clock starts again and you have a month minus one day to put your case in writing in an application to an Employment Tribunal. Note that both Early Conciliation and the Employment Tribunal are about seeing wrongs and awarding compensation if they upheld the complaint. I should add that it is extremely unlikely your employer would go all the way to a final Employment Tribunal and you would be offered some sort of payment to withdraw your complaint under a 'COT3' procedure, or you would be offered some money to leave your employment and keep your mouth shut. And even if you did get to an Employment Tribunal, the employer would try to justify its actions and your chances of success are quite slim - only around seven per cent of Employment Tribunal claims are ultimately upheld.
Anyway, that is what I believe would happen should you persue your claim under law as is your right.
However, you should consider other methods. Have you a report from the person who assessed you and diagnosed your autism? Something that explains how you are affected by autism. When I was diagnosed the psychologist who assessed me very helpfully gave me a lengthy appendix explaining how I was affected in the workplace.
With whatever evidence you have, contact Access to Work. They are able to suggest adjustments, give funding for any adjustments that are needed for you, and funding for a support worker and training for your staff by specialists. I live in the Midlands and have a support worker for two one and a half hour periods per week, training was given and certain duties were removed from my workload, as well as an adjustment in my hours of work (starting and finishing times, not the number of hours I work).
Unfortunately, even being autistic still means you have to 'prove' your disability to your employer to get adjustments. Unison have produced a useful publication 'Proving disability in the Workplace' where it lists disabilities and the procedures you should use to prove them. Such things as delayed comprehension, information overload, taking things literally, sensory perception (over or under sensitive to touch, smells, sounds, light etc) can all help prove disability. And with this your employer should try to provide adjustments to mitigate the effects. Dismissing you should only be as a very last resort, your employer should look at work you would be able to do and move you to a different post or change your duties, and just saying words to the effect of 'that's not the way we do things here' is not sufficient excuse.
With all your information on how autism affects you, write to your employer (by email is probably best as you have a written record of what you have and the replies). In your email ask them if from what you have written they accept you are autistic and consider you to be disabled under the Equality Act and if not, to state their reasons why. You can then show these to Access to Work when you make the application. Access to work act fairly quickly, it should all be able to be completed in six to eight weeks, and it is quite painless.
The above are all things a union representative would be able to help you with if you are in a trade union, and I have stated previously the value of a good trade union representative.
Useful links:
Access to Work:
www.gov.uk/access-to-work
Unison Guide to 'Proving disability in the Workplace':
www.unison.org.uk/.../Proving-Disability-and-Reasonable-Adjustments-Oct2018.pdf
TUC guide to Autism in the Workplace:
www.tuc.org.uk/.../Autism.pdf
You might also look on the Employment Tribunal Website for some cases and results. You will find the vast majority are 'withdrawn', which in all probability means they have been subject to a 'settlement agreement' where a sum of money has been paid for the employee to keep quiet. You can search for things such as disability, there are a few autism ones there, but any disability will give you some idea of the problems there are:
www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions
I will close by saying that I apologise if my information duplicates other posts, there are a large number and it is difficult to follow all the threads.
I am, by the way, a Union Equality and Health and Safety Representative and the above represents my opinion and experience, having been through the Tribunal Procedure myself.
Thankyou for your input. Any kind of legal advice has been sorely missing through the course of this.
Couple of important points for you to understand where i am at.
I have been through early conciliation and it failed horribly. It is ACAS that i hold responsible for this as they where dismissive and insulting to me and also clearly biased in favour of my employer irrespective of the facts.
A lot has happened as you will no doubt have read but ultimately i brought in ACAS because of a couple of sticking points.
1. Me having to clock in and out with the factory staff. No other office employee in tge company has to do this.
2. My refusal to accept targeted PC monitoring. With this monitoring working from home was to be permitted and working from home is permitted for other staff members without pc monitoring.
3. The enforcement of an hourly contract lost diagnosis as i was offered and accepted being allowed to come in as late as 10pm.
In conciliation my employer gave no ground. I went as far as to offer to accept all of the requests if i was granted unfettered access to the data the software generates. This request was ignored.
If i was to be allowed to work from home full time, this would have resolved all issues excluding the request for PC monitoring.
I could not agree to their proposals as for me it would have resulted in crushing scrutiny. I also have struggled with the clocking in system from the outset and so i would have set myself up to fail. In truth i beleive they saw me as troublesome and they were simply trying to monitor my every move and then dismiss me on the first breach. I would have been legally bound to comply with the regime if i had agreed and this to me was unacceptable.
After the concilition period failed they were aggressive with me and i had to take time off work. They are now denying my disability and i dont feel i can go back to work at present under these circumstances. I have defaulted on many things in the process due to wage deductions. My mental health has suffered.
Its do or die for me and so any input you could give me with your expertese would be priceless.
I should also add that 'constructive dismissal' cases are extremely unlikely to be successful. They are more a 'theoretcal' remedy than a practical one.