I made a throwaway as I am not sure what to do yet.
tldr: my ex-co-worker was kind of bullied due to their poor performance, has left the company and asks me to sign a document as proof of what happened to get additional unemployment benefits. Am I at risk of being exposed as the \`leak\`/what will hellowork do with the document if I sign?
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I work at a company and they are a good company, no complaints on my end, and almost everyone is happy here. However, I had a co-worker, ‘Tom’, who left at the end of his contract. I am not sure if he quit or was not renewed. Tom had a rough time last year.
Basically, he wasn’t good at his job and couldn’t learn from his mistakes so would repeat errors a lot. There is also an element of safety involved in this work, so after the first few times of not getting it the people responsible for training him/helping him of him started getting frustrated and would often berate him for messing up (note: they were not his managers – just people who also do the same job, have the experience to do it well and would have to fix up anything done wrong so by default would give instruction to him). It became somewhat passive agressive as well (e.g. You can take one box to the right place, right?) I understood their frustrations but I felt it was a little too harsh at times.
Over the year this caused those two co-workers to dislike Tom, as he made their day to day more difficult than necessary (without intending to, but the result was the same). So this manifested in something like bullying through exclusion. They would speak to him about the tasks directly (e.g. Tom, please put that box in the storeroom), exchange a good morning and goodbye, but that was about it. It was obvious they were avoiding interacting with him and anyone could sense their dislike. I tried to be kind to Tom where I could, but I was not involved in that department directly so I wasn’t responsible for the work and didn’t feel I had the right to say anything to the two experience co-workers.
Fast forward to now, and Tom has messaged me saying he has contacted hellowork about it and if he can prove the bullying type behaviour then he can get decreased insurance payments and double the length of unemployment benefits. He would like me to write a letter explaining that I saw X, Y, and Z and sign it with my name. He assures me that hellowork have said they will not talk to the company or make it awkward for me to stay if I testify on his behalf. He said the two options are proof like this or hellowork asks the company, but they said the latter option always results in \`no that did not happen\` and no action can be taken.
The types of things he said he told them are that he wasn’t given information he needed, when the co-workers discussed things in the group they would never address him directly, he was excluded from line groups which contained work information (this one I don’t know about as it as not my department), things not his fault were made out to be his fault, and that they tried to avoid letting the customers interact with him.
I can’t risk my job over this but I feel they deserve the benefits as what they are telling hellowork did happen. This is not a systematic issue with the company, more an issue of a personal issue between co-workers that escalated. I don’t know if management was fully aware, outside the fact that Tom wasn’t performing to standard. Tom, as far as I know, did not bring this to higher ups while still working with the company, so nothing happened.
My question: if I provide this proof with my name on it what will hellowork do with it? I find it hard to believe they will just give him the benefits and not take any action against the company. Will they contact the company to say they got anonymous information (so fulfilling their promise not to make things awkward for me) about this bullying type behaviour? Will they contact them saying that Tom made the complaint but not mention about the proof they have?
As I said, I can’t lose my job or risk my reputation there (I have a family to take care of) but I feel it’s the right thing to do, so if anyone has any experience or knowledge about helloworks processes here please let me know!
2 comments
Hello work doesn’t do anything about workplace complaints. Hello work is a job finding service that handles unemployment.
The labor bureau is the one who handles workplace complaints.
The TLDR for folks – workplace colleague sucked at his job and made his co-workers job more difficult. They didn’t appreciate this and made coworkers life less fun. Coworker wants to get unemployment benefits more quickly and longer and can if they can prove they left due to a hostile work environment.
Now the answer you need is:. Contact Hello Work and explain your concerns to them. We can’t really answer what Hello Works policy is. We also don’t know if Tom won’t spill the beans as in “well Timely Past saw it and will sign to it” just like he’s trying to get you to sign here.
Any protection you want is only as good as the people trying to protect you and I’d have serious reservations about this unless you have a really good relationship with Tom…
None. Hello Work is the place that introduces you to community service-level part time jobs and local SE jobs you have no qualifications for.