I've been working my current job for almost a year now

Question

and since I've started our schedulers have been very consistent with giving more days/longer shifts to employees who have been here longer. Recently one employee took a 3-week leave and my supervisor brought a former employee back as temporary and he had more hours than my coworkers, as well as myself. I was told by my superivsor that my seniority did not matter and that it was none of my business. She altered the schedule to give me more days, which is essentially admitting guilt IMO. My supervisor also said that he was only here to replace the person on leave. Now that the employee is back from leave the temporary employee is still on the schedule with as many (around 30) hours as the rest of us. I heard (not directly) that my supervisor wants to make him FT. I really don't know what to do about this situation. I am suppose to go through the chain-of-command, but the supervisor happens to be a childish person, who would take privileges away from me, since I would be "causing problems." Thanks for any input, and it would be great if anyone with legal and/or HR experience had any references to materials that would spell this out. BTW I am in California, if that helps. TIA.

Answer 1

I work in HR, but I'm not familiar w/all of CA laws, they have way more difficult employment regulations than any other state.  You should follow the chain of command but when the problem occurs w/the supervisor you have to go to the person above them, or to HR.  Your HR dept handles Employee Relations and probably has a grievance process.  I would suggest contacting the person in HR who handles the Employee Relations.  You may be afraid to, but as a person in HR to many times employees had real issue but would not officially report it to us so we can't do anything.  It is possible to hire a temp person to replace a person on leave w/o giving more time to current employees, though most managers will use their employees first rather than get a temp.  Your supervisor must have had some justification for the temp position to be approved. However, if she plans to hire him, the position would have to be available to the dept 1st, that would normally go to the more senior person who bids on the job, which will vacate their job and so on.  If you are in a PT job to get FT hours you will have to apply/bid on a FT opening.  If your budgeted for so many hours a week that is all your supervisor is required to work, though again from a cost standpoint it only makes more sense to work the employees you already have.  If this person does get hired w/o the position being available to the dept 1st you do have a unfair hiring practice complaint, which HR should handle or you can report this to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), though it's a valid complaint most employees don't want to deal w/the process or potential retaliation (even though that to is against the law and your protected under the Civil Rights Act).  Your best bet is to contact the HR Dept to see if the problem can be resolved, otherwise you may want to apply to a different dept/Floor.  A lot of times employees listen to rumors and take them as truths, not to say you are but there may be more things involved in this decision process than you or any other employee is aware of.  If you are a hard worker, arrive to work on time, work as scheduled then there is no reason your supervisor shouldn't give you more hours if they are available.  You could try to approach your supervisor in a more non-confronting way rather than question her authority let her know you would really like more hours and would like a FT position when it becomes available, and ask if she knows if that would be available anytime soon?  If you still get an unprofessional response she will needs to be reported to HR.  Again, if employees have problems w/their supervisor and they don't report it HR can't help nor will they be able to see a trend w/the supervisor handling her employees unprofessionally.  There is nothing you can do to resolve this if your manager unprofessionally responds to you, your best action to take is going to HR.  Good Luck!