Help required with workplace discipline

[Mr Oxide]

Using your phone to get your managers number would not typically be considered a data protection breach. UK GDPR are primarily concerned with unauthorised or accidental disclosure of personal data. In your case, wifey informed your manager about your emergency which seems reasonable and necessary. The alternative being work would have no clue where you are?!

As for ACAS, they are great for advice and will represent you, however, the company can decline to engage with them, this would result in ACAS issuing a certificate and you having to go to tribunal - expensive and time consuming and constructive dismissal/wrongful termination is difficult to prove/win - although check your home insurance for legal protection for employment disputes. Are you in a Union?

I think the AWOL is a stretch, you were taken to hospital by ambulance, what if you were in a car accident and unconscious?! Would work still write you up for AWOL for not calling in? As for the GDPR - another stretch.

It does seem that work is trying to manage you out, but it also seems like they are grasping at straws.

IIRC, If it goes to tribunal, hearings can be attended by anybody from general public. I can't remember if all the information gets published, but I got the gist that it could be the case. Its kind of hazy. I had a dealing with ACAS nearly 2 years ago and I let it go in the end as it could've cost me a lot if I lost. I was in the right, but didn't chance it, so moved on.

 

[Rroff]

It's really not hard to press 2 buttons on your phone and say 'I can't come on today I'm not feeling well'.

To be fair sometimes it is - I must have ate something which disagreed with me Friday and woke up Saturday with the room spinning (thank yourself lucky if you've never experienced vertigo like that) - maybe if it was life or death I'd have managed it but no way I could really unlock my phone and navigate to the work phone number in my contacts - about 2 hours of vomiting before things stabilised enough I could sensibly phone work... and was still throwing up for the next 9 hours