Fasckira said:
That seems pretty insane, especially if the HR department did nothing about it. Still, presumably the HR department would have still operated within the legal areas of the law and at least noted her complaints? Should make the case fairly straight forward in court.
I find this a pretty alien concept myself, I personally would never stay at a place of work that was causing me so much distress to the point that I would think of killing myself. I understand that employment rates aren't fantastic over there but even still.
HR Departments exist to protect the company, not the employees. What's more they themselves have limited resources, and during any inquiry in a boss vs. subordinate issue the boss by definition is at an advantage when it comes to controlling information.
It should also be noted that companies are all about smooth functioning, right or wrong in an absolute sense, if one person becomes the focus of ire within an entire team, it's not practical to fire or disapline everyone else in a department for that sake of that one person as that will lower the productivity, and cause all kinds of other problems.
It's not GOOD, but that's how it is with companies accross the board, not just with Capcom, and it's a touchy issue because from a practical sense you really can't just start firing people, or forcing them to tolerate someone they don't like to the point of it having turned into harassment.
That said, I do think that there needs to be more protection for employees (as someone who was screwed badly myself, more than once), but really it's not something that can happen internally within the companies, the authorities acknowleging the problem is a start (as happened in Japan) *BUT* one also needs to have the resources committed for actual enforcement, and a legal system designed to deal with this kind of problem.
An issue for example is that in an employee vs. employer greivience that goes through legal channels it typically becomes a civil matter. That means neither side starts with the assumption of bearing the burden of proof. The company controls all the records and information, and has more resources to draw on for lawyers, so it's pretty obvious how it goes.
A solution to that would be to force employers in such cases into the criminal justice system, and have the state with it's resources pursue the case, which doesn't happen that often. The problem of course being that investigations, especially up hill ones, are very intensive in terms of money and resources, and the goverment just doesn't have the money or resources to pursue every case of a disgruntled employee who might have bene mistreated by
an employer.
It's not good, but I understand why things are the way they are.
That said, in cases where you wind up with an employee who has every hand against them, it's rare that they aren't the problem, especially if it's been the case from the very beginning. I can say this as someone who has escorted many people off property after being fired, and having heard or looked into a number of cases officially or otherwise.
I do think that during unemployment hearings, there should be some more solid repercussions for companies when it's found during review than an employee was fired without cause. Right now that seems to be the only real system that works for this, at least within the US, but it really has no teeth, it gives money from the state, but doesn't actually address the problem employers when they exist. You'd think that if they have thousands of cases every year of people being fired without cause after review, that you'd start seeing some managers and company owners facing some penelties, and even doing jail time for crimes ranging from the stereotypical harassment (sexual or otherwise), to outright fraud in lying to their employees.
Such are my thoughts.
