Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

A member of staff from the university of Glamorgan did not approve of misinformation being sent to the NERC. Alan Guwy was dismayed by the correction made by this member of staff and decided to instigate an investigation against that member of staff, using information that he already obtained seven months earlier from that member of staff. The university HR religiously supported Guwy's convenient actions and the member of staff was found to be in breach of the employment contract, despite the fact that such information was made available to Alan Guwy and Guiliano Premier of the Sustainable Environment Research Centre in Wales seven months earlier.
----------------
Can somebody tell this person that a retrospective application of discipline or investigation into an alleged gross-misconduct claim is dodgy, fishy and malicious. What is the real agenda here? If the employee was in breach of contract seven months ago, then why did the responsible line manager do nothing about it at the time? Not very professional of the line manager to let it go for so long, is it? Or did he simply forget it, in which case was it really gross-misconduct?

Race case panel finds faults from above - Bradford University, UK

Bradford University has admitted that poor management has damaged staff relations, after a two-year investigation into allegations of racism that have torn apart its School of Health Studies. But a grievance committee found no evidence of race discrimination in the school, in the first of a number of race-related grievances taken out by black members of staff in the school's nursing division.

Despite a senior manager's admission of racial tensions within the nursing division in a memo last year, which reminded staff of their duties under the Race Relations Act, the university concluded this week that racism could not be proved. However, the division had been managed poorly and staff relationships had been damaged.

One black lecturer in the school, whose case was the first to conclude this week, has waited since June 2005 to hear the verdict.

In a case set to trouble a university that has made its commitment to "confronting inequality" part of its corporate identity, and in a city renowned for race-based social tensions, the academic, whom The Times Higher agreed not to name, will appeal against the decision. She said she would take the university to an employment tribunal if she was unsuccessful.

Bill Gulam, who represents the black staff involved in the grievances for the University and College Union and who has served as an equality specialist on the union's executive, said: "The findings are staggering. The university appears more interested in ignoring the race dynamic than attempting to improve it."

The Times Higher has learnt that Bradford's own "race-equality champion", professor of diversity Uduak Archibong, who is based in the school, has been the victim of racial abuse. Jeff Lucas, the deputy vice-chancellor, wrote in a memo to staff in 2000: "Many of you will know that over the last 20 months Udi has been the victim of a series of malicious and often racist messages, posters and mailshots."

The latest material had "emanated from the nursing photocopying machine", he said, adding: "It is incongruous that these episodes are happening among us." The perpetrator of the abuse was never caught.

While the direct abuse stopped after Professor Lucas's action, a source in the department told The Times Higher that tensions rose again around 2002.

A year later Professor Archibong and five other academic members of staff met with the aim of cataloguing their individual experiences of discrimination. They planned to use the dossier as evidence in a collective grievance.

In June 2004, Professor Archibong withdrew from the process. In August of that year, she was made professor of diversity. Three members of the group filed individual grievances, the first of which concluded last week.

Professor Archibong emerged during the grievance hearing as a key witness for the university. Despite evidence from other staff of a long-standing black white divide in the nursing department, the professor told the hearing there was no division along racial lines. She also requested that documents listing her experiences be destroyed.

The first grievance claim alleged that Annie Topping, head of nursing from 2002, had racially discriminated against the complainant, and that the dean of the School of Health Studies, Gwendolen Bradshaw, had allowed a racist culture to develop.

The panel concluded that, because several white staff had also complained about Dr Topping's management style, it was unable to conclude that her ehaviour was racially motivated. It found no evidence of racism against Professor Bradshaw. But it acknowledged that the university had failed in its duty to promote good relations within the university and recommended that the complainant be considered for promotion.

Dr Topping has since left Bradford for a chair in health and social science at Huddersfield University. She was abroad and unavailable for comment this week.

Dr Gulam has criticised Bradford's handling of the 25-month grievance process. He said that, after he complained that threats were made to witnesses by staff members, the committee carried out an investigation but did not reveal the outcome. But when Professor Bradshaw complained that Dr Gulam had bullied her, he was banned from appearing in the same room as the dean during the hearing.

The Times Higher understands that the committee was unable to establish that Dr Gulam had done anything more than ask the dean the same question several times in an assertive manner. On one occasion the hearing chair accused Dr Gulam of blasphemy after he used the expression "My God", and he was formally cautioned.

The Times Higher has also seen a petition in support of Dr Topping and signed by her deputy, circulated among staff in 2006. The petition, which was signed by white academic staff only, was not allowed as evidence to the hearing. Following discovery of the petition, Professor Bradshaw sent out a memo reminding staff of race relations law.

Dr Gulam, who works at Salford University, said: "Given the university's location and intake, its public image and national and international consultancy work and its involvement on race and equality issues, the conclusion reached by [the grievance committee] is disappointing."

Bradford's vice-chancellor, Mark Cleary, said: "We take any complaint by our staff very seriously, and the process we have instigated to resolve this particular case has been rigorous and comprehensive.

"We work hard to uphold our core value of 'confronting inequality, celebrating diversity', and the lengths we have gone to ensure the integrity of this procedure are testament to that. We are one of a few universities in the UK to have achieved Investors in People status across the institution."

From: http://www.thes.co.uk

Britain given stark warning on race relations

Britain, proud of its cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, remains a country deeply divided along racial lines where communities lead "parallel lives" and inequality, exclusion and isolation is suffered by many, a recent major report by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) said.

The CRE, founded under the Race Relations Act of 1976, has worked tirelessly for the goal of an "integrated Britain." Last month, it summed up the fruits of its labour in its final report on race relations, entitled: A lot done, a lot to do. From October this year, the CRE will move away from its single- issue focus of race discrimination to become part of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

Its "final legacy document" on race relations makes uncomfortable reading for government departments and other institutions accused by the CRE of failing to meet their obligations on tackling discrimination. The report, while stressing that some public bodies, including the criminal justice agencies, had made "huge strides" in the area of race relations, said that a number of government departments, such as health, education, home and foreign affairs, had failed to root out discrimination.

Ethnic segregation, residentially, socially and at the workplace, remained in Britain, said the report. "Extremism, both political and religious, is on the rise as people become disillusioned and disconnected from each other," it said. Thanks to race relations legislation, it was no longer possible, and "morally inconceivable," to practise open discrimination in Britain, such as putting up signs barring blacks from boarding houses, said the CRE. "But let's not kid ourselves. Britain, despite its status as the fifth-largest economy in the world, is still a place of inequality, exclusion and isolation."

"The simple fact is despite the progress that has been made, if you are an ethnic minority Briton, you are still more likely to be stopped by police, be excluded from school, suffer poorer health treatment and live in poor housing.According to figures released by the CRE, employment is the leading issue among ethnic minority communities. "Racism is still rife in the workplace," said the CRE. From a total of 5,000 complaints received over the last six month, 43 per cent were linked to employment.

"After 30 years of race relations and legislation protecting ethnic minorities at work, the CRE is appalled that racism is still widespread in workplaces across Britain."The most common complaints cited were workplace bullying, lack of career progression and being unable to secure interviews, as the number of race discrimination cases submitted to employment tribunals rose by a quarter last year.

National unemployment figures show that the unemployment rate for ethnic minorities stands at over 11 per cent - twice the national average. They also showed that a black person is three times more likely to be out of work than a white person. In addition, there were signs that society was "fracturing," warned the CRE report. "The pace of change in Britain over the last few years has unsettled many, and caused people to retreat into and reinforce narrower ethnic and religious ties.

"Tensions often arose from the "fear of difference," leading to diversity becoming a source of division rather than strength," the CRE said. "We live in a society where people may live side by side, occupy the same spaces and schools and shop in the same high streets, but too often they lead parallel lives that never meet," it said. The report's conclusions follow a stark warning by former CRE chairman Trevor Phillips last year, in which he said that Britain was "sleepwalking into segregation.

"The government, while stressing that it did not accept all of the CRE's findings, promised "positive and robust action" to address the concerns identified."The national picture on cohesion is a positive one. There is more that binds us together than divides us," said a spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government.

From: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/118529.html

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...