Plans for bullying enquiry at Leeds Met University (UK)

BBC 'Look North' has two news items that cover plans for a bullying enquiry by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) at Leeds Met University.

Info is available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/looknorthyorkslincs/latest_stories/

a) Plans for 'bullying' inquiry

Plans for an inquiry into alleged bullying at Leeds Metropolitan University have been revealed, and

b) Bullied at Uni, your response

A look at your response to allegations of bullying at Leeds Metroplitan University.

To view these reports you will need Real Player.
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No doubt for the situation to get so far, in this particular Higher Education Institution (HEI) bullying in the workplace must be endemic. No doubt also that there are many more HEIs with a similar problem. If you have the evidence, we suggest you contact the HSE and report all endemic occurrences of workplace bullying and how this affects staff.

Some revision...

• The role of HR and management
  
  
• Dismissal as an academic boomerang
  
  
• Expired disciplinary actions...
  
  
• Staff are silenced by fear of reprisals
  
  
• Academic unions have their head in the sand...
  
  
• Skorupski's Law and other related laws
  
  
• Backfire basics - The keys to backfire
  
  
• Are they claiming that you are emotionally unstable?
  
  
• The spinless Mob...
  
  
• The Seven Principles of Public Life - Higher and Further Education
  
  
• Dignity at Work - A Good Practice Guide for Higher Education Institutions on Dealing with Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace
  
  
• The experience of injustice...
  
  
• The no-Asshole rule...
  
  
• Six degrees of collaboration
  
  
• Academic leadership - The bullying boss
  
  
• Procedures for making allegations concerning Higher Education institutions and the 2008 RAE - UK
  

Leeds Metropolitan University awarded 'Divestors of People' standard

Leeds Metropolitan University is awarded 'Divestors of People' standard. For more info check the Hall of Shame.

This university meets at least 50% of the criteria, including: Staff are demorilised, the working environment is toxic, high levels of work-related stress, high levels of bullying and harassment by some managers, and high levels of over-management or under-management.

I'm...

Surprise, surprise...

Grievance procedures

Almost all of the claimants had taken steps to address their situation directly with their employer prior to lodging an Employment Tribunal case. Many appeared to have tried to initiate a formal grievance procedure, although some had at first simply told their manager or the personnel department of their situation in an effort to have their concerns addressed.

In such cases it seems that claimants feared the repercussions of ‘rocking the boat’ and preferred to keep their complaints as low key as possible. This usually involved informal conversations and meetings, which often later turned into procedures that are more formal when they did not yield the results hoped for by the claimant.

Some claimants reported that grievance procedures were initiated fairly quickly. This was in contrast to the generally much longer time it took for claimants to decide to lodge the cases with the ETS, particularly when the discrimination had taken the form of multiple events worsening over time.

For claimants to have eventually applied for an Employment Tribunal hearing, they had all reached a stage where they felt that the routes for resolving disputes within the organisation would not work for them, or they had tried these and they had failed, leaving them with no other options.

A good number of claimants had been through their employers’ internal grievance procedure, and had felt that they had not received a fair hearing, or that the eventual outcome was not satisfactory. However, there were a small number of claimants who initially felt that early attempts to resolve their issues with their employer had been successful. Despite this, their problems continued, so although grievance procedures had found evidence of race discrimination, this did not translate in practice to the situation being resolved in favour of the claimant.

From: The experience of claimants in race discrimination Employment Tribunal cases, EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS RESEARCH SERIES NO. 55, dti, 2006

National Ban Bullying at Work Day. 7th November 2007 (UK)

Some of us are working on our own localised actions for 7th November 2007 - National Ban Bullying at Work Day. Any action is good action. No action is a waste.

We tend to think that we should also write letters to The Editors in whatever country we live in - to coincide with 7th November 2007.

If you live in England/UK, you may wish to write letters to the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). We are less than some weeks away from National Ban Bullying at Work Day.

The Times Higher Education Supplement
Admiral House
66-68 East Smithfield
London E1W 1BX
UK

or, letters to be considered for publication in THES: letters@thes.co.uk

It is an opportunity we must use to highlight workplace bullying in Higher Education. We invite you all to write a letter and/or email to: letters@thes.co.uk, or post it to the above address.

More info on National Ban Bullying at Work Day.

Bad Apple Bullies investigate themselves and find themselves innocent

(Written by a Queensland teacher who has been Dealing With The Mob for the past six and a half years.)

When I was bullied in November 2000, the immediate advice of the Queensland Teachers' Union was that I should "accept the things you cannot change".

The QTU organiser told me that there was no hope of justice because the Education Queensland Grievance process did not work, and the organiser had never known a teacher's Grievance to be upheld.

Several other QTU officers later agreed that this was good advice, based on their own long experience with the department.

I could not believe that this was true. I had spent many, many hours in the local community, lobbying on behalf of the Labor party. I had always been an active member of the Queensland Teachers' Union. I believed in the Department of Education and the Queensland Government.

I simply could not believe what I was being told about the Labor Party, the Queensland Teachers' Union, the Department of Education and the Queensland Government.

I believed that I could get justice. But, six and a half years later, I realise that the QTU organiser was telling me the truth.

My hope now is that, by exposing the strategies used by Bad Apple Education Queensland administrators and Queensland public servants to bully and mob Queensland teachers, I may be able to shame the Queensland Government into taking action to deal with the problem of workplace bullying in Queensland schools.

To this date, 17 September 2007, I have seen no evidence of any change in the culture.

The documents that I have found under Freedom Of Information (FOI) demonstrate that the Education Queensland Bad Apples who attacked me have developed no insight into their bullying. They have shown no remorse. They have made no committment to change.

I have been particularly disgusted by the fact that members and supporters of my local branches of the Labor party did this to me, knowing that it would be very difficult for me, a Labor Party activist, to complain about their behaviour- because their attack on me took place during the "run up" to the February 2001 State election.

The people who bullied me are also members of my own union - the Queensland Teachers' Union. And members of other unions - mainly, I presume, the Queensland Public Sector Union (QPSU) - have either actively participated in the mobbing or passively allowed the mobbing to continue.

So these union members earn their living by (actively or passively) facilitating the abuse of their fellow union members. I have struggled for many years to believe this situation. This is not what I was expecting of the Labor party or the Union movement.

Mr Rudd, I wrote to you on 12 September 2007. I told you the details of my story and I asked you to deal with these Labor party thugs.

I have been waiting almost seven years for somebody to take responsibility for dealing with this situation.

The Queensland Government can't seem to deal with it. Can you deal with the Labor thugs, Mr Rudd?

More info at: http://www.badapplebullies.com/investigations.htm

Corrosive Leadership (Or Bullying by Another Name): A Corollary of the Corporatised Academy?

...While the bullying phenomenon does not lend itself to ‘robust conclusions with regard to causality’, I have postulated that the reason why the incidence of bullying in universities is becoming more pronounced may be correlated with the move to corporatisation. The perception on the part of managers that they are the new elite whose role is to increase productivity and maximise limited resources through constant surveillance and auditing has contributed to the normalisation of a corrosive form of leadership.

Di Martino suggests that we tackle the causes, rather than the effects of violence at work by developing a preventive, systemic and targeted approach. This is all very well in theory, but it would require rolling back the corporatist phenomenon and reinstating principles of collegiality to allow a range of voices to be heard. I am sceptical about such a rollback, at least in the short term. Not only is it apparent that governments are expecting universities themselves to assume greater responsibility for their operating costs, the new managerialism has created a class of powerful players with a substantial investment in its retention.

Thus, while initiatives, such as the development of codes of practice by occupational health and safety bodies and unions, are contributing to the emergence of a new public discourse, such codes are incapable of addressing the factors that have contributed to the political economy of the corporatist university. Educative and prophylactic measures are highly desirable, but they can go only so far in an unstable and uncertain climate, where students are customers and academics are productive units, whose value is assessed primarily in terms of the competitive dollars they generate. Powerful line managers, whose role it is to exhort greater productivity from these unruly units, have made themselves indispensable in the transformation of universities as producers and facilitators of the new economy. Hence, the corporatised university, with its over-zealous managerialism, competition for resources and eviscerated notion of academic freedom, is likely to represent an ongoing source of grievance about workplace aggression.

A formal avenue of redress will have to be devised to placate this dissonance. However, rather than relying on a traditional model of linear causality, which focuses on linking ‘victim’ and wrongdoer, a new remedial model would be better off addressing the political environment that has engendered the harm. A single-minded focus on psychopathic managers absolves corporations, including universities, from responsibility for the fear, the insecurity and the relentless pressure to be evermore productive that the market message induces.

From: Corrosive Leadership (Or Bullying by Another Name): A Corollary of the Corporatised Academy? By Margaret Thornton, La Trobe University, Australia.

Not offering mediation...

Anonymous said...

My former employer encouraged my wife to accept mediation with her line manager who'd wrongly written a defamatory job reference for her, while refusing to afford me the courtesy of mediation with my line manager who had severely bullied and harrassed me to the point where I became ill with PTSD. Just goes to show the double standards that can be employed by academic institutions when it comes to trying to get employees in conflict to work out their differences.

It's good to see that Tribunals are wise to this nonsense and that they are starting to hold accountable employers who fail to take bona fide actions to bring employees together in a spirit of reconcilliation and cooperation.

My former employer is going to have some tall explaining to do about why they refused to afford mediation to me and instead sacked me.

Unfairly dismissed after bullying claim

Thornett v. Scope: unfairly dismissed after bullying claim
10 January 2007 - case report

Thornett v. Scope: [2006] EWCA Civ 1600

CA: Pill, Laws and Gage LJJ: 27 November 2006

The claimant worked for the employers in a managerial capacity. Following a complaint by a colleague who alleged that the claimant had been bullying and harassing him, the employers made a finding of unsatisfactory conduct against the claimant and gave her a final written warning. The claimant, who did not accept that the finding was correct, made it clear that she thought it would be very difficult for her to continue to work with the colleague who had made the complaint. The difficulties between the claimant and her colleague were not resolved and ultimately the claimant was dismissed.

The claimant's complaint of unfair dismissal was upheld by the Employment Tribunal which found that a reasonable employer would have taken further steps to encourage the parties to work together.

In assessing the amount of the compensatory award under section 123(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 the tribunal considered how long the employment relationship would have lasted if the employers had encouraged the parties to work together. The tribunal acknowledged that without hearing evidence from the claimant's colleague it was a highly speculative matter but found that the best assessment it could make was that the claimant's employment would only have lasted a further six months. It accordingly held that the loss suffered by the claimant as a result of the employers' fault was limited to her earnings during that period.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed the claimant's appeal against the amount of the award, finding that there had been insufficient evidence to entitle the tribunal to speculate as to the duration of the employment relationship and that it should not, therefore, have placed any limitation on her lost earnings.

The employers appealed.

The Court of Appeal held:

An Employment Tribunal's task, when deciding under section 123(1) of the 1996 Act what compensation was just and equitable for future loss of earnings, would almost inevitably involve a consideration of uncertainties and the presence of a need to speculate did not disqualify a tribunal from carrying out its duty under that section.

Although there might be cases in which evidence to the contrary was so sparse that a tribunal should approach the question on the basis that loss of earnings in the employment would have continued indefinitely, where there was evidence that it might not have been so, that evidence must be taken into account. There had been evidence before the Employment Tribunal which created a risk that the employment would not have continued indefinitely and the tribunal had been right to take that evidence into account, but the reasons for the tribunal's finding that the employment would have continued for six months had not been sufficiently stated in its determination. Accordingly, the case would be remitted to the tribunal for the compensatory award to be reassessed.

The appeal was allowed.