His mistake was he didn’t check his timesheets as you have to log on to a computerised system to book overtime, leave and other systems. He was one day called into the office and told he has been overpaid and will need to pay it back, he replied “no problems, how much?” Their reply was they didn’t know but he will have to pay it back. They then went away and threatened him with a debt collector, this move would damage his credit rating. This happened a second time in my strategic business unit and one has to ask, is it just in this business unit or common among the divisional structure.

This time a long time employee with over 30 years service who was on long service leave requested to be paid at half for double the leave as per the conditions of employment. He was travelling overseas and didn’t have access to the system with the funds deposited into his bank account. When he returned, he reviewed his bank and noticed he had been overpaid, he contacted the college to inform them of the over-payments. They then threatened him with a debt collection agency after he reported the over-payments to them as they didn’t know.

Wrong guy, he is a long time union representative, he knows his rights and they were unable to intimidate him. They really do not like me discussing these in an open forum but as I do not name the organisation, there isn’t much they can do about this, much like the case studies during university studies – this is about openness.

Another employee received a letter from his superannuation provider as the college had failed to make payments for an extended period and he was about to lose his insurance cover. He contacted human resources and after much messing around received his compulsory payments as required by law. Although on this occasion, they just made up the payments without any threats or coercion.

Then there was me, we have to book a leave plan a year in advance around September or October of the preceding year. I booked the leave for the whole year as requested and set about booking my flights as normal. I then went online to book a day of union training when I noticed I was missing two weeks of annual leave. So when I checked my leave balances, my enquiries led me to the explanation that they had gone into my system and booked my leave as default, naturally without informing me.

Now, when I tried to get the leave credited back to my account, I was informed that I had already been paid for the leave. I was at work, they didn’t even know I was working despite the fact that I was taking classes of students, filling out legally binding rolls and entering student results.

Let’s just say, there was an audit trail that could easily identify my attendance at work, this is despite classes of students and colleagues physically viewing me at work. Nevertheless, that didn’t work and getting my leave back didn’t happen. I had a moratorium with human resources that I would create any more issues until I had a face-to-face meeting with the divisional director and the director of human resources.

They had called the meeting but I was not concerned, they are extremely worried about the claims of have made of corruption, tainted hiring practices and inefficient use of government funds. The problem is, they knew I was right. Based on my previous experiences, I don’t give up and follow the issue through causing stress to all involved. Also based on previous experiences, this could take from twelve to eighteen months for me to get my leave credited back to my account.

I am sure they work on the proviso that most people just give up – that’s not me. So I had more leave booked, so I cancelled the leave and then went on leave for two weeks. I never gained a financial advantage and brought my leave totals back to where it should be. This time I wasn’t at work and they didn’t know I wasn’t there, this leads us to the question of control. There is no control in my workplace, people are abusing this lack of management arriving late, leaving early, not attending work at all and creating an excessive overtime balance with people filling in for people.