Were you missing from the office party guest list this Christmas? If so, you could receive a nice bonus.
This is suggested by the country’s largest civil servants’ union, which has told its members that if they have not been invited to the annual party and suspect this may be due to illegal bias, they could claim compensation from their employers.
In other words, you and I will foot the bill, as always, although what applies to public officials, of course, applies equally to employees of private companies.
Says the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU): “Excluding someone from a work social event because of a protected characteristic such as gender, age, religion or ethnic origin, could constitute discrimination.”
My God! And there I was, naively believing that hosts were allowed to invite whoever they wanted to their own parties, whether they were employers or not. Now that I know better, this gives me an idea.
By a stroke of bad luck – or good luck, depending on how you look at it – it seems that this year I have not received my invitation to the pleasant annual party organized by the employees of the Mail travel desk, which for me has always been. one of the highlights of the season.
Of course, they may not be hosting any parties this Christmas. After all, many private sector companies are having to make cuts, following the blow of Rachel Reeves’ ‘Budget for Growth’ (ho, ho, ho).
Another possibility is that my invitation has gotten lost in the forest of annoying emails I receive every day from PR firms, ‘reaching out’ to hope I’m having an amazing week and trying in vain to interest me in a fabulous new one. eye shadow range or the analysis of a group of experts on zinc production in Kazakhstan.
Were you missing from the office party guest list this Christmas? If so, you could receive a nice bonus, writes Tom Utley (stock image)
Or maybe I was invited to the party but quickly forgot about it, a growing problem for me these days.
But let’s say there has been or will be a travel party and I’ve been left off the guest list. Shouldn’t this put me in a great position to go to an employment tribunal and demand a big check from my bosses, protesting that I am a victim of discrimination because of one of my protected characteristics?
Admittedly, I don’t have as many of these as some people, as I am a white heterosexual, born and identify as male. But I am a cradle Catholic (although embarrassingly inactive) and, at 71, I am considerably older than most of my colleagues.
Whether I’ve been left off the list due to an innocent oversight or simply because travel people no longer find me funny, can’t I claim to be a victim of age discrimination?
Don’t imagine that it is only in theory that an employment tribunal would order a company to pay, simply because an employee had not been invited to a party.
In fact, earlier this year a pregnant woman was awarded £20,000 after claiming she had been deliberately excluded after telling her bosses she was pregnant (pregnancy and motherhood are also protected characteristics).
Even more disconcerting, back in 2021, a new mother on maternity leave was paid £9,000 after being left off the guest list for Christmas drinks, which had been arranged at the last minute. Yes I know. The country has gone crazy.
In my opinion, we can now expect a bonanza for public officials (after all, it’s just our money).
There are so many who ‘work’ from home these days that I dare say that those in charge of making guest lists have forgotten that they exist.
But even the workers who have been invited should not despair. Because the Christmas party still offers many other opportunities to make money at the expense of businessmen.
That’s because Labour’s new Worker Protection Act puts a legal responsibility on employers to protect everyone from exactly the kind of behavior many of us used to expect on these binges.
As the PCSU puts it, sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior are “as unacceptable at social events as they are in the workplace.”
It continues: ‘This includes unwanted comments, gestures or physical actions. Remember, alcohol is not a defense for such conduct and employers are required to address these issues seriously.’ (I wonder why ‘forced’ instead of the English word ‘forced’?)
In other words, we could be in line for payout anyway if we get offended by almost anything a fellow guest might say or do.
Don’t ask me why an employer should be held responsible for an employee’s misconduct, or why, for that matter, a pub owner should be expected to pay compensation to a waitress if she is harassed by a rude customer. Shouldn’t the sinful client have to answer for himself?
In fact, I often wonder why anyone would want to run a business today, so great are the burdens the Labor Party is placing on employers.
As for the holidays, I must say that when I started in the working world, five long decades ago, most of us looked forward to them as a license to drink our fill, let our hair down, and generally act in ways that few of us We would have dreamed of behaving in the office.
These were occasions when the beaded blonde, after a glass or two too many, would take a journalist by the hand, drag him under the mistletoe and tell him that she had been in love with him all year. Or a sub-editor in his glasses would tell a columnist precisely why he should boil his head.
The next morning, while most of us were suffering from killer hangovers, the newsroom was abuzz with salacious gossip about who had said what or done what with whom.
Meanwhile, one or two embarrassed colleagues carefully avoided eye contact with anyone who had witnessed their behavior the night before.
As for me, I don’t remember ever misbehaving at a Christmas party. Strictly entre nous, however, the very fact that I have only a very vague memory of any of these events over the last half century strongly suggests that I almost certainly did. But don’t remind me if you were there.
God knows, however, that from now on I will be on my best behavior. On the one hand, I am an increasingly decrepit grandfather, too old, ugly, and terrified of Mrs. U’s wrath to swipe a toe.
Fortunately, my days of flirting with colleagues, telling sexist jokes to strangers, or bouncing off light poles on my way to the night bus home are long behind me.
But I’m also terrified, in this new puritanical age of public denunciation and cancellation, to say or do anything that might cause the social media lynch mob to come after me with their noose.
However, if you see me at a party this Christmas, feel free to subject me to sexual harassment or rude gestures, mock me for my great age, or mock me with anti-Catholic jokes. I could use the check!