Injury to Feelings

Being brutally honest, I think its a load of tosh, if we continue to let crazy claims come through, we are going to become even more like America, why are we not learning from their 'Sue Everyone' mentality? What ever happened to people just dealing with things, when you think that our parents and grandparents 'dealt' with the aftermath of a war, dusted themselves off and carried on!

If I were to dwell on my past but for a second, I would have reason to feel pity and long for some sort of closure, but I don't, I am heading to the future, not towards the past.

OK, rant over

Injury to feelings? the law does work in odd ways.

If someone was racially victimised, then, and after the proper process was followed, escalated to line manager etc, but the racism led to dismissal, I dont understand how this sentence applies:

is entitled to recover for any injury to feelings and/or personal injury attributable to the discriminatory act (such as a racially-motivated dismissal) without having to prove that the injury resulted from actual knowledge of the discrimination

if you are at a tribunal from wrongful dismissal, isn't that paramount, rather than getting tied up in injury to feelings? Does sound a bit OTT and drama queen.

Wrongful dismissal, racial or whatever, if guilty, get a nice payout and rightly so. If your a chancer and deserved to be sacked, then fair enough, and the tribunal will hopefully see the light.

But injury to feelings, christ, Clive could take me to the cleaners

Injury to feelings..... hmmmm... why do i bother trying to make a success of my business???
I must be worth millions in compensation lol

Thats it - everyone can see this - im not in work today as im off seeing my solicitor


I think Trena has set the bar on my expectations lol

In all seriousness though - how can you legislate for hurting someones feelings? Im well known for my dry sense of humor & quite often i get close to the mark, well often over it too lol but im not vindictive and i never intentionally set out to hurt someone.

Im with Kip, we are becoming just like America and too litigious - OMG who's gona sue me for saying that !!!!!

I think that discrimination is difficult to comprehend for people who don't often find themselves on the wrong end of it.

I think that when it is connected with work, it goes a step further. In our society, so much of our self-worth is bound up in what we do for a living. You meet someone for the first time, one of the first questions they ask is "so what do you do?" If, for whatever reason, you're not in work - you're a full-time parent, or you're too ill to work, or you're a full-time student, or you got made redundant two weeks ago and haven't found a new job yet - a cloud descends over the conversation.

If you're unfortunate enough to not have an alternate source of income, savings, or family support, and you end up claiming benefit - well, you might as well just start ringing a leper's bell as you are going to be utterly despised by half the people you meet. "Oh, you're not welfare scrounging scum are you?" is a phrase that echoes in your ears even after you've managed to get a job again.

To lose or be asked to leave your job is to lose your pride, self-respect, dignity, self-worth, social status... I'd even go so far as to say you lose part of your identity.

If it happens because you're rubbish at your job, made a major mistake, punched a client, sexually assaulted a co-worker, then it's your own fault and you need to suck it up and learn from it and bloody well Not Do It Again.

But if it happens because of something beyond your control, such as your gender, race, disability, age... if it happens not because of something you did, but because of something intrinsic to who you are, then it is an appalling and unjustified personal attack.

You find yourself wondering exactly what it is you are supposed to be learning from the experience. It is an enormous effort of will to resist absorbing the now-proven fact that people in the world view you as an inferior. Sometimes, in the dark moments that occur while you are struggling to adjust to the financial and circumstantial changes that are part of being unemployed, you start to wonder if they're right. If enough people think of you as "scum", if enough people believe that you're so sub-human that it's okay to call you scum to your face - does it become true?

It crushes you.

Which is all rather a lot of preamble to explain why I hold the following position:

Wrongful dismissal is about telling employers that they did something wrong in thinking it would be okay to discriminate on the basis of colour/disability/gender/etc. It sends a message to them and to the rest of the business world that treating a "minority group" in this way is not acceptable - which is necessary if we are ever going to overcome the discriminatory attitudes which are ingrained in our society.

Injury to feeling, on the other hand, has less to do with the employer, or to do with minority groups, and is more about telling the individual person who was discriminated against in this particular instance loud and clear that it was wrong for them as an individual to be treated in such a manner. That they are NOT inferior. It is a way of acknowledging the punch to the gut that discrimination feels like.

I have been involved in every area at one point, had been accused of being racist to a girl I sacked in a call centre, and the only reason this did not go further is because I was living with an Indian girl at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with race, but ineptitude and laziness.

The disability one is another I know only too well, having worked as a national service manager for the largest mobility manufacturer in the UK, I also did a majority of the audits on shops and businesses in Falmouth, to ensure they satisfied the Disability Act (Oct 2004). And I cannot telle you how many clients I met that had limbs missing, only having a hand in use, the rest of the body lifeless, and there was a great amount of these that did not let it affect their careers, one chap, we had to build a very special power chair specifically for him, he drove a

Seems to me that the whole world has just gone 'no win no fee' claim mad.
everyone wants something for nothing and if they can blame someone else for there wrongs and get paid thousands for it then hell why not!
lets go back to when you could call a spade a spade and not get sued for it i say!

It sounds like we have to get the idea that our language and actions must always be discriminatory free and always watch over your shoulder when you speak.

Kip, it must have been infuriating to be falsely accused of racism. But just because you are not racist, does not mean that racism does not exist, nor does it mean that racism is a non-issue brought up only by people who are out for someone to blame. The same goes for any form of discrimination.

So far, I've never made a claim or sued anyone when I have experienced discrimination. I have a limited amount of time and energy and I choose to spend it in other ways (like setting up a business). However, no matter how positive my attitude, I assure you that I experience discrimination every single day of my life. Sometimes it's on a fairly minor level, like not being able to get into a shop or some idiot making a stupid comment. Other times it's at a major level, such as losing a job because of managers being unwilling to consider making access adjustments. A friend of mine was almost killed by discrimination and prejudice - a dentist assumed that because she was visibly disabled, she was stupid and could not possibly know about her own allergies, so he lied about what was in the syringe, and went ahead and injected her with an anasthetic that sent her to the ICU for a week.

Saying that society should acknowledge that (a) this happens, (b) it has a significant impact on the people to whom it happens, and (c) it is not acceptable, is not the same thing as "wanting something for nothing". It does not indicate a deficit in the individual's mentality or morality.

(Oh, and my friend, who is thankfully now out of hospital, is worried that if she makes a formal legal complaint about the man who nearly killed her, she will get it in the neck for being litigious.)