Managing moral panic

Fire is the best metaphor for understanding it. It can burn you in a flash. Out of control, it consumes everything. To be near it is risky. Failing to notice it can mean losing your life. Managed well, it gives the power of Prometheus.

It is passionate, collective craving to get rid of someone in order to ease anxiety and fear, and make everything right again. Mass hysteria it may be called, or sometimes zealotry, mob violence, witch-hunt, lynching, or the rule of crowds. A classical sociological label is moral panic.

You may have said at some time that moral panic has no place in a university, that here intellect controls emotion, reason rules passion, sobriety prevents frenzy, intellectual independence subverts conformity, and multicausal science disallows singlemindedness. This is the myth academe turns on. As an administrator, you have a duty to proclaim and defend the myth. You do not need to believe it...

To greater or less degree, moral panic fuels the effort to rid your academic unit of Dr. PITA. His name implies so much, at the times encourage it. Your ethnics tribunal, if it is staffed by true believers in its aims, is a tinderbox of hysteria... the tribunal encourages single-issue obsessions and an unbalanced, moralistic mentality...

From: "Eliminating Professors. A Guide to the Dismissal Process", by Kenneth Westhues, published by Kempner Collegium, 1998.

The bystander effect...

"The bystander effect is watching some evil take place, but since we are watching with others who are watching, and no one seems to be doing anything about the evil, we go on watching and doing nothing about it."

Carol Bly, Changing the Bully Who Rules the Wordl, 1966, in the chapter entitled "Evil in the Cofortable Herd." Also quoted in "Eliminating Professors. A Guide to the Dismissal Process", by Kenneth Westhues, published by Kempner Collegium, 1998.

Celebrate National Ban Bullying At Work Day - UK

Auracle Music and Beat Bullying, the UK's first national anti-bullying children's charity that aims to stop bullying where it starts, present an afternoon of music, poetry, art and performance on Sunday, November 4th at the Ram Jam Club, Kingston-Upon-Thames.

November is an important month for developing public awareness of anti-bullying causes, with National Ban Bullying at Work Day taking place on November 7th and Anti-Bullying Week happening during November 19-23.

That's why we're kicking off the month's activities with a special fundraiser event filled with exciting performances and displays of work by a diverse group of international artists and performers, many of whom have, themselves, been targets of workplace bullying.

The preliminary scheduled lineup includes performances by Tiramisu (soprano and accordian duo), Lizard (folk rock band), Artressa Phunding (performance art), the Lori Fredrics combo with bassist, Eric Rupert (jazz), poems by Jane Doe, projected images by Lin Johnson, Joan Mallon and others, and special guest artists TBA.

Admission is £10 with all proceeds going to benefit Beat Bullying. Lunch service is available for purchase from 1:00 p.m. with performances starting at 2:30 p.m. and lasting until 5:00 p.m.

For further details and directions visit: www.ramjamclubkingston.co.uk
or www.auraclemusic.co.uk/beatbullying.html

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.
------------------------
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