A friend of mine was bullied for 6+ months by her manager to promote a subordinate with whom he had an affair. This subordinate is an average performer with nothing much to show to be promoted from a Sr. Engineer to a Staff Engineer. My friend gave a pushback as she felt it is unethical and unfair to her other subordinates. He threatened her that her performance rating would be impacted. Further he said she could have potential fights with her spouse and that her family relations could get strained. He started excluding her from meetings, every month he would come to her and ask her to promote the subordinate. Last month, he said to her give her a promotion and I will move her to a different team. My friend said, go ahead move her to whichever team you want to, but I am unable to justify the promotion. My friend complained to HR of his behaviour. The meeting with HR was hot and voices went high. Last week, she got a termination letter and all the documents and evidence she had was confiscated from her. She would like to complain to the top management of this behaviour by her manager.
Since the employment is 'at-will' she has no where to complain. The company has given her a standard letter protecting their rights and the rights of their current, and past employees under the US Law. But there is no word that they will equivalently honor and not purposely defame her and sabbottage her job hunt.
In this circumstance would it be more of a negative impact for her to send a letter documenting the sequence of facts that occured with the manager to the highest level of leadership? Would it negatively impact her career? Would the manager be able to sue her for sending the letter. She was with the organization for a year.
This is a reputed multinational company located in the United States.
Thanks much
What we would like to achieve -
We believe the manager has been unprofessional and would not want another person to go thru the same torture. We would hate to see this manager being promoted to higher levels as he is unethical in his practices. Especially bullying.
Also, we would like to write the letter as a documentation of facts in case the manager comes behind her in the future