Each time I ask for overtime or for a temp to help out on a short-term project, my manager sends an e-mail to me, and to her boss to say that I am not coping with the job.

Recently, she has employed a temp for herself (in addition to the clerical assistant that works for her), despite her workload being reduced recently because of tasks passed to me.  Her boss (and her!) don't see this as 'not being able to cope'.  The temp was originally recruited for one week, but has now been here for five, despite the workload slowing significantly (as it always does at this time of year).  The last clerical assistant was 'recruited' in a similar way, and my manager is very defensive of who is being seen to be 'in charge' of her.

I suspect her of empire building, which won't affect my job as such, but will affect my salary - in my last appraisal a salary increase was recommended, but not allowed because the budget was taken up by an increase in my manager's salary.

A lot of work that I do, if it is done well (and I try to do it well) exposes historic mistakes made by my manager, whatever I do to try to be understanding about it, and I suspect that these manoevers on her part are more about protaction than doing the job.

When I was criticised for 'not performing' recently, the cases mentioned were actually cases that my manager was handling - but she seemed unaware of this when she criticised me for them not being dealt with.

It feels like a case of a senior manager being allowed to get away with underperformance, but I wonder how best to address this?  Direct confrontation is difficult because she has already claimed I am bullying her - despite there being no evidence, (or in fact any reason for her to think this).

I sent both the claim of underperformance and bullying back asking to present some evidence if it was serious, and none has been forthcoming.

What do people suggest?