Consultation with labour lawyer
- City (or suburb) where you need the service: Durban
- What are you looking for?: Consultation
- Are you an employer or an employee?: An employee
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Price estimate:
R3000
I was initially offered employment as a SHEQ Officer in September , but within that same month, my responsibilities were expanded, my title was contractually changed to Head of SHEQ without any accompanying remuneration adjustment, and I was formally signed onto a statutory Section 16.2 legal appointment, transferring the company's health and safety compliance duties directly to me. For 23 months, I successfully managed these high-stakes, senior executive responsibilities entirely unsupervised, including successfully executing critical compliance and national standards audits for major entities such as SABS, Shell, and Engen. Despite this record of service, over a 7-month period from March , the employer unilaterally reduced my salary and withheld a contractually promised 5% group increase while subjecting me to unfounded verbal performance criticisms. In an effort to cooperate and align with business expectations, I sent a formal email to my boss, Gavin, requesting a copy of the performance review document I had signed at the beginning of the year so I could review the feedback with the consultant, Bernard. This was ignored. I sent a subsequent detailed email explicitly listing my 23 months of senior, unsupervised Head of SHEQ and Section 16.2 responsibilities and begging for a documented list of measurable targets. The employer completely ignored both written requests. Furthermore, I repeatedly requested a progress report from the consultant, Bernard, who acted more as a learner than a mentor; these requests, including a final WhatsApp follow-up, were read and completely ignored. In a final meeting to seek clarity, I explicitly told my boss that if he could guarantee my job security, I would stay with the company. His direct response was telling me to take the external job offer as he could not guarantee my security. The employer's calculated silence, unauthorized financial deductions, refusal to provide performance targets or feedback, and explicit refusal to guarantee my job security created an entirely hostile, bad-faith, and intolerable working environment, leaving me with no option but to resign on 26 August , effective 25 September ."
