I believe I may have a strong case involving retaliation by my employer, but want to be sure.

About 14 months ago I complained about the behavior of a black coworker to my black manager. (I am white). Following that complaint (which I did not pursue past manager level, and have thorough documentation and witnesses to the event) I was given a poor performance review (PR) by my manager. I went through the formal complaint process which involved going all the way to the General manager (a 3-level review). The complaint was denied at each level, and heavily documented. Although I provided extensive documentation invalidating the allegations and pointing out the omissions by my manager in the original performance review, there was no change made to my original PR "scores". Because the scores were low, company directives required that I be put into a Performance Improvement Process (PIP). The PIP was used by my manager not to improve my performance, but to carefully try and document perceived problems with my behavior/job functions. I carefully wrote documented responses to each allegation and was generally able to show conclusively that the problem was more fabrication than actuality. In the cases where the event did occur, it was minor and had no tangible negative impact on company profits or general operations. All alleged problems were equal or lesser than what would be considered normal within the workplace, and no more severe than those issues that other employees in the department experienced. The PIP period just ended, and I was given even lower scores that I had going into the program. The message is clear- I will soon be dismissed. I will file a formal complaint within the next 10 days, per Directive, but have little faith in the process as I have experienced strong management bias by the Employee Resources Manager in the first Complaint process.
No case such as this is one-sided, but i do believe there is very strong evidence to support my perception, both written and by other witnesses in the department (there is strong anti-manager sentiment in the department due to a history of unfair treatment to the majority of the staff).

Thank you for reviewing my question- I look forward to your response and to learning more about my options.

0 answers  |  asked Jan 31, 2010 10:36 AM [EST]  |  applies to Washington

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