Is this discrimination or retaliation? Or can they do this?

[kcauman]

I work for a government contract where we offer both phone support and email support. Since my department (email) is smaller we do not get all the perks that the phone side gets. Even though management likes to remind us that we are phone employees first and foremost that just happen to work email. All the people in my department have work w/ the company 8 plus years and have been trained in all Lines of business. I recently found out about an internal job posting that my department was not invited to. After raising this issue to HR (about our department not being invited to apply for the promotion) several people in our department were invited to apply. We were told our shifts would change but it would be based on 75% performance and 25% seniority (as stated in the Shift bid policy). However when we were in our training class we found out that none of the phone employees shifts were changing due to the recent shift bid they had participated in prior to the job offer. Yet everyone in our department was forced to change our shifts to late evenings. This was not based on business need or the 75/25 shift bid policy as previously told to us. Also all the shifts were the same late evening and when 7 T3 employees are least needed. Then one of the phone employees offered to swap shift with me. When I submitted the swap per policy I was told that I was not allowed to use the swap process because I came from the email department. Even though now I would be doing T3 phone work and the same job as the person I would be swapping with. The phone employees whose new shift that they were assigned prior to the job offers would not begin until Sept 29. When I asked if that would be the same for email employees I was told no our new shift would start immediately. It seems to me that management is making it obvious that they did not want to include and promote us and is doing everything to discourage people from our department any advancement. In addition when we ask for why they are not following corporate policy's regarding this matter we are just getting the run around or told that these policy's do not apply to people from our department. Even though they hired 20 people to be promoted to this position the 2 of us from email have obviously been treated differently, even though we have more seniority and training than any or the phone employee that were hire to do the same job. Is this legal? Is this retaliation for making them include us in the job invitation? Is this discrimination? When I mentioned speaking with HR management told me that there was no reason to go to HR because this is not an HR issue.

 

[mightymoose]

It is not a kind of discrimination that gives you any legal recourse, if they did in fact discriminate against you at all.

 

[kcauman]

I didn't think it was a discrimination as much as a retaliation. They didn't want to include our department in the job invitation and now they are doing everything they can to get us to reject the invites. Out of 7 of us who started the training class only 2 from my department remain. They just refuse to work with us....anyof us. Oh well I guess sometime you just got to suck it up and pay your dues to get where you want to be.

 

[cbg]

It's not illegal retaliation either.