If it be your will wrote:Labour disputes are ideally best left to your union representative. Were you in a union at the time (anyone can join one, and this sort of of thing is exactly what your fees are for)? Flouting labour laws is a serious offence, so the other alternative would be a no win-no fee solicitor. It's up to all of us to stand up to workplace tyranny whenever we see it, using the laws we have all fought for over the last 100 years.
You can also highlight you allegation here:
http://www.nhs.uk/Services/dentists/Rev ... x?id=23685" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This is something the General Dental Council would take very seriously, should you wish to make a formal complaint. So there are lots of options available, only one of which is to lie down and accept the abusive (and illegal) labour practices you describe.
I don't like working for arseholes and Patrick Carroll was, in my opinion, an utter arsehole. So I left. I didn't have any spare money for a union subscription back then. If you live or have ever lived close enough to the breadline you'll maybe understand but £10/month can be a lot of money and when you're confident in your ability to find work and look after yourself you really have to think hard about paying £10.
I asked myself if it was worth it and I told myself it wasn't. I determined that if the time ever came when I felt mistreated there I'd simply up sticks and leave and take my labour elsewhere. So that's exactly what I did.
I had "no-win no-fee" solicitors prepared to represent me on a different matter against Patrick Carroll but I chose not to go down that route. Any "victory" I won would by Pyrrhic and there is never a guarantee of winning, even with the best of cases. Having "no win no fee" solicitors prepared to represent you shows how strong your case is but it's not the only thing you have to consider. You'd endanger your own future employment prospects, endanger the employment of every single one of your work colleagues and the rewards of "winning" would be infinitesimal to nil.
In the end I was rather lucky - I drew his name (without any help from colleagues, natch) in the 'Secret Santa' and bought him a DVD (Region 1 so he couldn't play it) of Scrooged. I handed my notice in on Christmas Eve.
If you think all our labour laws can be implemented exactly how they were envisaged you're living in cloud cuckoo land. If you think businesses won't find ways of clawing back four mandatory holidays from their expenses column then good luck to you. If Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM and implements this then everybody out there in a middle class job will get their four days off. The only ones who will be taken for a ride will be the little people with tiny pay packets like I was back then.
It'll be the part-time workers, the shelf stackers, the till operators, the cleaners, the bar staff, the waiters and waitresses. Vote for Jeremy Corbyn if you must but it's these kind of workers who'll be bearing the brunt of the business backlash against the four extra holidays.
Getting back to workplace relations in general - The only way to ensure good workplace relations is to work somewhere where there aren't any areseholes. This is very, very difficult. Shoddy bosses find loopholes in the law, shoddy employees find loopholes in the rights legislation. I've known both.
As far as I'm aware the GDC (as they were, if I remember they've been replaced by another organisation - NHS England?) would not take it at all (seriously or otherwise) because they only deal with the clinical side of his business.
They actually closed the practice down for a week because Patrick Carroll had not installed a proper decontamination / sterilisation room (he relied instead on old fashioned machines in the individual surgeries). We were instructed to inform the patients that the practice was "undergoing renovation" which was, strictly speaking, not a lie but it was hardly the whole truth either. The practice had been informed they should have installed this kind of decontamination procedure much earlier and the word among us staff was that he had been too tight to do this. It was widely believed he was hoping for some kind of grant or government help for bringing his privately owned practice up to scratch. He has a reputation as a legendary tightwad amongst his staff. Particularly given how spectacularly rich we all assumed he is.
As far as I know the practice adheres to all the necessary clinical standards these days although I do have to say that I found the admin procedures to be shoddy and amateur. The data was stored in old-fashioned paper files and whilst I was there he resisted all the numerous pleas to modernise the practice and bring in computers.
Anyway, I'm meandering. The point is, the GDC deal with clinical matters. Not business affairs. They would have referred me, or anyone else, to ACAS and business tribunals.
All of my old work colleagues depend upon the business for their wages. I'm not about to start anything which could endanger
their livelihoods. There are many excellent dentists who work at the practice, regardless of how shoddily I was treated as an employee there or however much of an miserable arse or tightwad Patrick Carroll may allegedly be.