Case Study: employee rights and representation

Angela is 37 years old and has worked full time as an office cleaner for a large cleaning contractor for almost
seven years. Since she has been in the job Angela has had to take time off work because she had a miscarriage
and because of serious illness. Within six weeks of returning to work after her four months of sick leave, Angela
was sacked for taking too much time off sick. With union support she was able to get her job back on appeal.

On an average day Angela starts work at 6am and gets a 40-minute unpaid break at 9am. She then works from
9:40am through till 1:15pm, despite her contractual hours ending at 12:45pm. There were previously two cleaners
working at Angelas office but she is now the only one and has to do the work previously done by two people
within the same number of hours: Its all left to me, so it is a little bit stressful thinking that Ive got to do
everything and dont want to get myself into trouble for not doing the work.

Angela has diabetes and has suffered from other serious illnesses in the past. Her employers have not allowed
her to take time off to attend hospital appointments, despite the fact that an occupational health professional
advised her employers to let her go. Angelas dismissal was justified through misuse of the disciplinary system to
essentially penalise her absence through illness: They [the employer] havent said I shouldnt have been off, but
they give me warnings which brought me up to a third stage warning. They do it very confusingly.

Angela stated that the company breaches health and safety regulations by advising their workers to mix cleaning
chemicals. The workers are often expected to clean without enough cleaning products and Angela has had to
buy products with her own money a number of times: They do put a lot of work on us and they expect an awful
lot and weve had trouble getting stores [of cleaning materials] and stuff but they still expect us to do the job with
no stores. She also told us that the vacuum cleaner supplied by the company is poor, and her work takes her
twice the time it would take with better equipment.

Angela reports that her manager is rude towards workers, shouts at them and does not deal with problems and
requests adequately: I want her to realise that she shouldnt be talking to people like that and maybe she [the
senior manager] should have a word with her and maybe send her on a course, a communications course,
because she cant communicate with people properly and someone of her position, you know, shouldnt be
speaking to her staff like that, because we dont speak to her like it.

The job has a physical and financial impact for Angela: she is always tired because of the early hours and always
has to watch the pennies. In five years she has received no bonuses and has had only a 2 per cent pay rise, a
significant cut in real terms. Angela would be happy to continue working as a cleaner in the future but would like a
more secure job where she receives better treatment: I do enjoy cleaning, just I dont enjoy the company that I
work for at the moment.

1: How, and in what was does the labour market and cultural beliefs reproduce discrimination and inequality in
the case study?

2: Evaluate the case study using the business case and social justice case approaches.

3: Why should managers care whether some people are disadvantaged and suffer unfair treatment?

The business case

In discussing the link between HRM and equal opportunities, David Goss suggests two ways in which equal
opportunities issues are located within the HRM debate. The first relates to: concerns about human capital, in
which opportunities to develop and progress are artificially blocked for any particular group which results in the
sub-optimal use of human resources; hence it is economically rational to ensure that all of those who have the
ability also have the opportunity to exercise it on behalf of the organisation.
(Goss 1996)

Social justice
The second:
in contrast, emphasises the importance of social justice, in which equal opportunities is primarily a moral or
ethical project that focuses on the processes giving rise to inequalities and seeks to address these in a qualitative
sense, not by reducing social difference to a common economic currency, but by promoting its acceptance and
understanding. (Goss 1996)