AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDER AND EMPLOYMENT

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.

  • My case has now been listed for a 5 day hearing and my employer is desperate to settle. I have judicial mediation set up for in a months time. My employer is going to have to dig in to their wallet. 

    Judge was wonderful, my employers argument was dismissed entirely. They now have to go back to the drawing board.

  • My case has now been listed for a 5 day hearing and my employer is desperate to settle. I have judicial mediation set up for in a months time. My employer is going to have to dig in to their wallet. 

    Judge was wonderful, my employers argument was dismissed entirely. They now have to go back to the drawing board.

  • Now ive slept on it. I have decided on not looking for a CTO3 agreement. I am going to take this all of the way if i can. I have seen a lot of press coverage on Autism and court cases lately and this is what i want with this. My treatment has been bullshit.

    If we dont take a stand we will forever be victims. It is as simple as that. Its like taking a slap in the face and not reporting it because i am a minority.

    If the system screws me over, so be it..i am not going to roll over because i might not win though. I dont care what the statistics are.

  • In a nut shell, i was being harassed and victimised. I stood up for myself and then got my diagnosis. Things got better. ACAS got involved and then they went back to harassing me.

  • At one point prior to diagnosis, i cant truly paint a picture of how nightmarish my day to day working life was for this company. I was disliked and ignored by everyone. I had my managing director sat next to me day in and day out. I even had a female staff member who felt she had to be escorted past me because i was somehow dangerous. I didnt speak to anyone. I was not looking after myself properly. I was having arguments with members of staff across email. I felt quite alone and isolated. Nobody asked how i was. I did the grieving for my daughters death at my desk. What a horribly dark time it was. It only started changing for the better when i stood up for myself and so i find it hard to accept that this route of standing up for my rights is not the correct one.

  • They also tried to get me to work out of sheffield branch which would have meant a 2 and a half hour commute each way. 5 hours on to the working day. Obviously i refused.

  • You also have to understand that this clocking in involved walking out of my office...across the yard....into the factory...into the factory canteen to clock in there. Humiliating

  • With regards to issues in the conciliation, i just wsnt to extract from ACAS exactly what they have been saying to my employer and how my employer came to know about my complaint. This is something i can deal with separately. I get the impression that ACAS are extremely worried about this. This is a battle for another day. This is also a battle i intend to wage on social media and not in a court or tribunal. 

    This preliminary hearing is happening next week. My lack of engagement is not my fault. I have a conciliator telling me to agree to everything (and more). I would have rather agreed to everything outside of conciliation as at least i wouldnt have been legally bound to it. I think i was fair and compromising. I couldnt accept a complete capitulation. Especially when my managing director was trying to throw in a few extras during a conference call between both parties and ACAS. Surely one of the big questions a tribunal will ask is why conciliation has failed.

    A lot has happened but my issues are clear.

    There are 3 main ones as i have said before. Clocking in, targeted monitoring and contract change.

    These are all wrong as i understand it. The legislation is there as far as i can tell.

    If i lose i wont work in this industry again.

  • The concilliation  process is meant to be confidential between you and the employer and the concilliator.  The early concilliation process usually fails, often because of lack of engagement which is what happened in your case.  It is only a stage in the Tribunal process and one you have to go through in order to proceed to a tribunal.  That should have been where your targets should have been and you should have built up a strong case for the lengthy tribunal process. 

    The next stage would be a preliminary hearing where before a judge you would put your case to find whether there is a case to answer and also to find out the length of time of the hearing, and dates for which evidence must be provided.  If the judge at the preliminary hearing decides there is a case to answer and sets the date and time the case is meant to last, you will no doubt be offered concilliation for a COT3 agreement.  And I would strongly advise to accept this.  You can set conditions in this, such as being not held to account for any alleged past misdemeanours and a clean slate.  You would in all probability be working against solicitors at this stage and you would have no contact at all with your employer about this.  It would all go through the solicitor and the COT3 concilliator.

    Unfortunately you cannot bring up anything that was discussed in the conciliation process at a tribunal without the express consent of the Tribunal.  And this is very unlikely and you would have to convince the tribunal that an exception should be made in your case.  And this is very unlikely.  Things are not like Star Trek where Scottie asks what the chances of success are and Spock answers 'I estimate at approximately 4,353,261 to 1 against' and Scottie says 'I'll take that chance' and succeeds.    I would not say you had no chance at all, but the chance is very slim.

    I am not supporting ACAS but you have to try to accept that this is the way things are done, however much you dislike it.  And I am one of the last people to 'give up' on anything but one has to be pragmatic about such things.  I very much dislike the fact an employer can do what it likes and then offer a bribe of a sum of money and that suddenly makes everything all right.

  • I feel somewhat disillusioned about my case now. Perhaps the dwp is a preferable route

  • And an apology from ACAS

  • Good luck with your case - hope it all goes your way.

  • I want compromise and an end of the harassment by my managing director

  • Not at all - but you might want to think about what you actually want from all this. What is your preferred solution? Are you looking for cash? Are you looking for keeping your job?

  • You have also got to understand that this has had an impact on my health

  • Are we saying that i should submit to my employer. Relinquish any hope of any adjustments. Have my employer ignore my disability and accept any harassment?

  • Also might i that the compromise i offered was completely reasonable and fair. I had offered to comply with ALL of their demands on the understanding that i have unfettered access to the data that the PC monitoring generates. This as i understand it is my legal right under the GDPR. They could not legally refuse this at all. Yet this was bot good enough.

  • I don't think Trainspotter was supporting ACAS - he was saying how unreliable they are and they are more likely to support the employer.

    I'm still not sure there is an amicable solution to your problem - I think too many bridges are burning.

  • Well the question i will be putting to the tribunal is this:-

    How could i have reasonably agreed to what was being proposed?

    An agreement in ACAS conciliation would have resulted in the following :-

    1. I would have been legally bound to comply with a clocking in process that no other office employee is subjected to. Additionally i would have been setting myself up to fail this process i was now legally bound to comply with as i had been struggling to comply with it successfully from the outset.

    2. By Agreeing to my employers demands i would have permitted a regime of scrutiny that would have documented (a) my work arrival and departure times along with my lunch breaks. (B) the content of all of my work emails (c) the ferocity of my work rate from one day to the next in detail via software that tracks idle time (D) detailed reports of what i am doing in my job from one day to the next for an entire week. (This may all seem reasonable but when considering that no other designer is required to do this; this is clearly discriminatory).  I am a designer and it is difficult to plan work past a day as one job can take vastly more time than the next. My job has always been done to a high standard and this scrutiny on me alone is entirely unjustified.

    3. The adoption of an hourly contract that was entirely unique within my industry let alone my company.

    The truth is that if i dont stand up to this; its only a matter of time before they find something to sack me for.

    My issue with ACAS is a real one. As you are a unison representative you probably work with some good and honest ACAS representatives so i can understand your support for them.  I have been sorely disadvantage by my involvement with them and i am not prepared to roll over and accept it simply because that just how things are.

  • I have been around long enough to know that however much one thinks they have a watertight case it doesn't always go the way we want it to go.

    I agree we should beware of any litigation.  The only people who gain from it are the legal profession.

    The purpose of ACAS or Early Conciliation is not to 'talk sense' into any of the parties.  It is to try to get an agreement within the law.  And to me it seems that this was not going to happen.  An infinite force against an infinitely immovable object.

    The only way this can be resolved in my opinion is by 'starting again'.  Unfortunately sometimes we have to accept second best in these circumstances.  An employment tribunal is well known to be biased in favour of an employer especially in cases of doubt.  Your employer would always say that any action they took was due to business purposes not discrimination.  And my advice would be to try to stop being consumed by thoughts of the Acas processes being unfair, twas ever thus and always will be and it is a battle we cannot win. 

    All as we can do is use processes in place and  think of ways of using them to our advantage. 

    And that means having a clear idea of what we want to achieve and whether it is realistic.