Today I started work on the documents to file with the French equivalent of an Industrial Tribunal. These will allow me to pursue the case of, what I believe is, unfair dismissal by my last employer. I say ‘I believe is’ rather than just plain ‘is’, as my views just count for so-many words in front of the court. I must prepare a case, and present material to backup my allegations. I think that I can prove my points inconclusively, but one shouldn’t skin one’s chickens before they’re hatched. Or whatever.

I have, I will admit, been putting this off. But why?

Probably for two reasons.

The most basic is that I needed to get this thing organised in my head from a rational point of view, to let the emotions cool out. The second is the same as before but stronger. Put simply, it hurt.

Now I might have the words ‘dumbo’ tattooed across my forehead, but even I could realise that my previous employers were—in my opinion—stupid, short-sighted, money-grabbing, lacking in most forms of social graces, incompetent, and generally disagreeable. However, I just took the point of view that I was there to do a job, and I might as well get on and do that to the best of my capacity. Which I did. And when I couldn’t do something in work time, I did it at home. I often compare Scripting to doing crosswords; it’s a form of problem solving… once the issue to be solved has hit you, it just gnaws at you, day and night, until you find a solution. For instance: I was told that what we called the spelling corrector on the search engine would be too complicated to implement. [In fact, it is not a spelling corrector, it is really more of a routine that proposes what it thinks you are looking for, based on the dictionary of available terms, all 30 000 of them, rather like Google does also with misspelled words.] I spent couple ot days researching directions, then it took a weekend to sort out initial code, and about two more weeks, part time, to finish coding, installing, and debugging. This is just one of a number of things that I did, mostly on my own time, and of which I am reasonably proud in a professional sense.

I don’t expect to be adored for what I do. Just a work of acknowledgement from time to time, and not being treated as an idiot, is a decent start. Work is not a charity, we’re paid to do it, and all that we do must have a clear cost benefit, or increase the bottom line. Unlike the in-house IT and software, the work I was doing on the website, not only improved matters, but it didn’t break down every two days. Clients said that the site had never been better, nor easier to use.

Each of us working in that company bought in about one million francs [about 150 000 euros] in turnover per year. My job, coding, isn’t on the selling edge, but the web site—that I was keeping running smoothly, and constantly streamlining and improving—bought in over 80% of the revenue on the French market. Foreign agents bought in about 40% of revenue, and I was dealing with them. I also, among other tasks, negotiated bringing in new pictures; in fact over a couple of months, I brought in from foreign suppliers more images than the home roster of about 40 photographers and illustrators usually supplied in one year. I did not commission, brief, select, edit, nor treat those images. That was other people’s work. But the images are the raw material that the agency needs to function, and to sell.

I didn’t expect a sinecure. I expected to work. I expected to continue doing a decent job that paid its way within the company.

And then I got fired.

There are two reasons you can get fired. You mess about the company, and you get fired with a blame on you; or, the company needs to save money, or redeploy forces…

Was I, then, blameless? I was not fired for any fault, but let us suppose for a moment that the employer preferred to fire me under false pretences to disguise a fault in order to not cause me prejudice. This seems far fetched, and it is suprising that it wasn’t mentioned at some point. In fact, during all the preliminary and obligatory pre-dismissal talks, it was the opposite: I was most embaressingly praised to the sky…

Not that we didn’t have disagreements, I will freely admit. I felt that it was not correct to be obliged to work on—what I believed was—unlicenced software, and if given the opportunity, I would say so. When other staff were charged with irresponsibly installing third-party software, or accusations of pirating copyrighted material were made [that were subsequently withdrawn amid great sucking in of air through teeth, and crossing of fingers, while explanations were given], I weighed in pointing out that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I did, at these times, always start by saying that I would prefer to make my statements in private and could I leave the meeting and continue the discussion on the subject with the management, later. They refused, so I had to point out this dumbness in front of other employees. The last straw came when they tried to put together an IT charter that would make the employees responsible for all and any software installed on the machines that the company provided, under threat of instant dismissal if illegal software was found. We are talking about software that was installed by in-house IT staff under orders of management. Much of which I suspected was illegal. Catch 22, please meet Kafka, Josef K., this is Catch…

I pointed out that on my machine not only had software been installed against my wishes, but the company was unable to show me any proof of purchase, or group/site licences, that corresponded to the applications. This is software that included Microsoft Office, Adobe PhotoShop, an internal messaging app called Quick PopUp—I also had questions about UltraEdit and Microsoft Access, but was not 100% sure about these. There was even more questionable material on the Mac that I had been given to use, probably including Quark XPress as the company copy had been given to an ex-employee a year of so back…

So I pointed out that this proposed charter would allow the employer to dismiss staff, over software that the employer had caused to be installed on the employees computer. Of course, under French workplace law you can’t refuse the work on illegal software, and there is no legal protection for whistle-blowing employees. Quite the opposite, it has even been ruled that whistle-blowing can be considered bringing the company into disrepute, and so justify dismissal!

I did what I considered appropriate. I tried to persuade in-house IT staff to audit installations and licences, to at least know what licences should be acquired in the near future; I tried to make other staff, and the employer, aware of their responsibilities, as well as point out the ridiculous aspects of the charter; I researched KeyServer software that would allow installing certain applications on all machines, but only permit the allotted number of copies to run as the best way of reconciling legality and convvenience; I researched and presented alternatives like OpenOffice, and legal cheap [or free] Runtimes for MS Access, that would remove the need to acquire licences.

But at no point was any of this mentioned when I was being fired.

I was initially told that the financial situation meant that I would be fired. OK, bad things happen. Except, we had previously been told that turnover had decreased. And for the second year running. When questioned, my employer admitted that the decrease in turnover was less this year than the year before [6% versus 8% if I remember rightly], but also that since January—this was in June—the situation had stabilised. I pointed out that turnover is not profit, and that in the two years while turnover had decreased, salary costs—the most important outlay for the company—had been halved. And that while the company had posted a small loss last year—the financial year was just ending, but results were not yet public—taking into account the effects of savings on wages and other economy measures, the company could be expected to be on the level again, and probably showing a profit. I was made aware that my remarks were not appreciated, but the financial aspect subsequently disappeared completely.

The next point was that the technological mutation that had made it necessary to employ me was now over, and that the company could no longer employ me fulltime. This somewhat surprised me, as I was busy working on the next version of the website, had published different discussion documents for new tools [including boolean searching, something customers had been asking for], and had a quite long ToDo list of small things that needed doing. Of course, I proposed that they keep me on part-time. This wasn’t appreciated either.

Under French workplace law, under certain circumstances, employees who have been recently dismissed have the right to be first in line for re-hiring. If they make this desire known to the [ex]employer. I did. I sent off the required letter in the week following my dismissal.

In the past, a company was only obliged to rehire someone under this legal disposition for exactly the same job. Tribunals have since widened the criteria, as it was too easy for the company to fire employees on a pretext, to vary the job description by a comma, and to rehire someone else. Now, the company must consider if the dismissed person’s aptitudes and suitability, even after retraining, make him or her a suitable candidate for the job. And if the answer is probably ‘yes’, to hire.

Needless to say that, since I have been fired, at least four people have been hired in different posts, including IT and export staff. Obviously I could not be considered apt for these last two as part of the necessary qualifications is being daughter or son-in-law of the company owner…