Silenced: Uni’s £1.8m gagging orders

The University of Sheffield has spent over £1.8 million taking out controversial ‘gagging orders’ on former staff members in the last five years.

Compromise agreements with confidentiality clauses, known informally as ‘gagging orders’, have been issued to members of staff leaving employment for reasons other than early retirement. They are now known as settlement agreements following the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.

The agreements are used when the University is in dispute with a staff member and are made through a voluntary process where both the University and the employee are legally represented. But unions fear that employees may sign compromise agreements because they fear the stress associated with taking legal action or remaining in work.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) said: “We are seriously concerned that the new legislative provisions on the admissibility of settlement offers and discussions in unfair dismissal cases will send a signal to employers that they are free to sack staff for arbitrary reasons without needing to follow a fair disciplinary procedure.

“Whilst employees will have a theoretical right to turn the employer’s offer down, many will consider they have no genuine choice other than to accept the sum of money and leave their job. Many employees will accept the offer simply because they assume it is a foregone conclusion they will be dismissed if they do not.

“Others will fear that they will be bullied or victimised if they remain in the job. The provisions are therefore open to abuse by employers and could have a detrimental effect on wider employment relations.”

The University said that “the decision to compromise is made taking into consideration factors including the beneficial impact to all parties through timely resolution to the dispute, the commercial impact of resolution, and the effective management of personal and or organisational risk.”

A former University employee who signed a compromise agreement told Forge Press: “Such is the stress of taking legal action against powerful organisations that many employees choose to sign a compromise agreement containing a gagging clause rather than pursue legal action and put their health in jeopardy.”

Cllr Shaffaq Mohammed, leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on Sheffield city council, described the figures as “worrying”, going on to say: “When such large sums are being spent on these agreements students have every right to know why this money isn’t being invested in university services instead. As one of the largest and most respected institutions in our city,  the University of Sheffield should be setting an example to other employers.”

Compromise agreements have been a contentious issue in the area recently, sparking outrage from local people when it was discovered that Sheffield city council had spent almost £200,000 on the orders since 2011.

Sheffield city council spent £28,000 on compromise agreements in 2011 and £162,530 in the 2012-2013 period, with many of their compromise agreements including the controversial confidentiality clauses. But the University of Sheffield’s spend dwarfs this – with £196,907 spent on gagging orders in 2011 alone, more than seven times the amount spent by the council in that year, despite having only 6,031 employees compared to the council’s 18,000 plus.

The number of agreements made and the costs incurred are subject to annual scrutiny by the University’s senior remuneration committee, made up of the vice-chancellor and non-University staff.

The University has racked up almost £2 million worth of the controversial clauses in the past five years, peaking in 2009 when 24 agreements were made at a cost of £549,589.

In total, the University has made 102 compromise agreements with confidentiality clauses since 2008, resulting in a total spend of £1,835,498.

These figures also tower over the “concerning” spend of almost half a million pounds at the University of York. When the University of York Students’ Union officers found out about the £479,464 spend on confidentiality clauses since 2008, the spending was criticised as “careless”.

Kallum Taylor, York Students’ Union president, told York student paper Nouse: “These numbers are obviously concerning. Obviously we don’t know the ins and outs, but 80k a year could go a hell of a long way elsewhere for students here. Students are now paying a fortune, and their financial stake in the University has increased dramatically. Scrutiny on spending should be higher than ever, and this type of business shouldn’t be carelessly accepted as a norm.”

University of Sheffield Students’ Union president Ally Buckle declined to comment on the figures. A human resources spokesperson for the University said: “The University of Sheffield has a well deserved reputation as an excellent employer committed to developing a culture of excellence, collaboration, innovation, commitment and respect.

“The University is proactive in ensuring that it promotes and develops its staff capability, and considers a range of employment options to address any shortcomings which, when the circumstances warrant it, include compromise agreements. We take care to ensure this approach is only used voluntarily, and in circumstances where both parties have agreed it’s the best course of action, frequently in discussion with trade unions.

“The number of cases and University of Sheffield spending on such agreements is low when compared to other sectors. Over the past six years, spending has been at an average of around £18,000 per case, representing a tiny fraction of our total £1.1bn staff budget over the same six years.”

From: http://forgetoday.com/news/silenced-unis-1-8m-gagging-orders/

Failure to investigate bullying claim costs $350,000

Three Queensland Appeal Court judges have upheld a security guard’s appeal and awarded her $364,008 in damages for a psychiatric illness caused by her manager “verbally” abusing her.

QCA President Justice Margaret McMurdo and Justice Robert Gotterson and Ann Lyons ruled University of Sunshine Coast’s (USC) failure to investigate and take action on an earlier bullying and harassment complaint left staff unreasonably exposed to risk of damage.

USC security guard Gjenie Wolters brought action against her employer on the grounds it had breached its duty of care by failing to provide a safe place of work. She alleged she developed a “debilitating psychiatric illness” after her line manager Mark Bradley verbally assaulted her in March 2008.

Wolters alleged Bradley “aggressively confronted” her, waved his arms at her and yelled while accusing her of abandoning her duties during a blackout. She said she attempted to explain her conduct, but Bradley did not want to discuss the matter and “stormed off”.

Wolters lodged a grievance with USC HR the next day but the unit “declined to investigate her grievance”.

Bradley, the judges heard, had been the subject of a bullying and harassment complaint some months earlier to Wolters’ grievance. Another female security guard, Heather Carney, lodged a complaint Bradley verbally assaulted her and threatened her position.

Carney voluntarily left USC but did not withdraw her complaint...

Former USC vice-chancellor Thomas said Bradley had a history of raising his voice to security staff. But Thomas did not regard it as bullying as security staff were “quite different from the normal people who populate universities” and used to being yelled at.

The Appeal Court judges upheld Wolters’ argument USC’s failure to investigate the Carney complaint meant “no consideration was given to specific aspects of Mr Bradley’s conduct about which he should have been counselled”. “It follows logically the appropriate reprimand and counselling Mr Bradley would have been given would have placed considerable emphasis on bringing that deficiency to his attention and counselling him to check his facts first before criticising other staff members.”

The judges awarded Wolters $364,008 and ordered USC to pay her legal costs for the appeal.

From: http://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au/workplace/2013/08/28/failure-to-investigate-bullying-claim-costs-350000/

Prevalence and Forms of Workplace Bullying Among University Employees

Over the past decade, a growing number of Anglo-American and Scandinavian researchers have documented the extent to which the university environment provides opportunities for workplace bullying. By contrast, there has been a visible lack of similar studies in non-Western national contexts, such as the Czech Republic and other Central Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The present article addresses this gap by reporting the findings of the first large-scale study into workplace bullying among university employees in the Czech Republic. The exposure to bullying was assessed with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) in a sample of 1,533 university employees. The results showed that 13.6 % of the respondents were classified as bullying targets based on an operational definition of bullying (weekly exposure to one negative act), while 7.9 % of the respondents were identified as targets based on self-reports. This prevalence is comparable to bullying rates in Scandinavia but considerably lower than in Anglo-American universities.

Differences between Anglo-American and Czech universities were also found with respect to the status of perpetrators (bullying was perpetrated mostly by individual supervisors in the Czech sample), perceived causes of bullying (structural causes perceived as relatively unimportant in the Czech sample), and targets’ responses to bullying (minimal use of formal responses in the Czech sample). The authors propose that cross-cultural differences as well as differences between the Anglo-American model of “neoliberal university” and the Czech model of university governance based on “academic oligarchy” can be used to explain these different findings.

From: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10672-012-9210-x

THE Best University Workplace Survey: staff unheard?

Around four in 10 university employees feel unable to make their voices heard within their institutions, according to preliminary findings from the first Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey. Analysis of the first 2,300 responses to the survey, which is still open to all university employees, reveals that 37 per cent disagree with the statement: “I can make my voice heard within my university.”

The figure rises to 56 per cent when including those who neither agree nor disagree.

“There is de facto no meaningful management at an everyday level,” says one senior lecturer at a university in the South West of England. “Shop-floor problems such as too few teaching staff are usually ignored by managers and dealt with by staff ad hoc.

“There is almost no meaningful forward planning beyond thinking about the needs of [the research excellence framework], or branding issues such as the National Student Survey.”

A respondent from another institution, who works as an IT technician, sums up the concerns of many respondents, saying: “Communication between staff and senior management tends to be a bottleneck in both directions. Senior management makes all the right noises – but never checks that it is happening in practice.”

However, although many employees appear to feel overlooked by their institution’s hierarchy, the vast majority enjoy working with their peers. Just 6 per cent say they do not, with some 47 per cent “strongly agreeing” when asked if they enjoy working with their immediate colleagues.

“My department is particularly good at supporting early career academics. I have worked at other institutions where levels of exploitation are appalling but [my department] is especially sensitive to the needs of [such] staff and proactive in ensuring they get the support and career development they need,” says one academic at a Russell Group university.

A professor at a 1994 Group institution adds: “My line manager is an excellent, responsive, can-do sort of person who really cares about his academic colleagues. My department has really good morale.”

The Best University Workplace Survey is open to all UK higher education staff. John Gill, THE’s editor, said: “The larger the number of people that participate in the survey, the more detailed will be the picture that we piece together about working life in our universities.

“Our intention in this first year of the survey is simply to get an idea of the areas in which universities are performing well as employers, and those where they need to do more.”

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

Exeter’s rankings success gained at staff’s expense

League table success at the University of Exeter may have been gained at the expense of staff, who claim to have experienced “undue stress”, “bullying”, sexism and a “loss of voice”, according to an internal report.

A group convened at the request of management and led by Nicky Britten, professor of applied healthcare research at the institution, has identified a “top-down management” culture as a source of problems at Exeter.

Based on 288 responses from the university’s 3,900 staff, the report says that many people found the senior management team remote, with major decisions being “made by a small group of people behind closed doors without consultation”.

“The tone of communication (described as ‘hectoring’) might have been appropriate for managing underperformance ten years ago, but is inappropriate now,” reads the report, which was presented to the university’s council, alongside the senior management’s response, on 21 February.

Many staff felt their opinions were ignored, “with no acknowledgment or feedback”, it adds. The group also documents “some alarming reports of bullying, manipulative and unpleasant behaviour” by particular senior managers and a feeling among some that the university “is a self-perpetuating male-dominated culture” with policies such as maternity leave not taken seriously.

“There are reports of men making casual sexist remarks…referring to women as ‘girls’, promoting men over women (despite the women having equal or better CVs),” it adds.

The investigation was initiated after the university’s wider staff survey of 2012, which found that 36 per cent reported feeling unduly stressed, compared with a benchmark figure at universities conducting the same survey of 28 per cent.

The survey also found that only 60 per cent said they felt able to voice opinions, compared with a sector benchmark of 76 per cent.

Exeter vice-chancellor Sir Steve Smith told Times Higher Education that senior management would respond to the concerns identified by the group, and in many cases had already made changes.

Expanding student numbers and raising Exeter from an average ranking position of 34th in the UK during the 1990s to the top 10 today had meant being “very centralist”, he said. However, efforts were now being made to try to reverse this.

Exeter had already reinstated academic heads of discipline to decision- making positions on the university’s college executives and was on a recruitment drive that would reduce workloads, he said.

“I could have written to staff saying ‘we’ve got the [2012] survey results and we did better [than] or the same [as the benchmark] in 17 out of 25 [areas]’, but the truth is I know that there are tensions…We’re trying to be as open as possible,” Sir Steve said. The problem would now be working out how widespread the concerns were and whether or not they were historical, he added.

However, co-president of the Exeter branch of the University and College Union, Jo Melling, said the union felt that senior management’s response did “not meet the needs outlined” by the group.

“In particular, we are concerned that the vice-chancellor’s executive group has not recognised the issue about voice and governance that the group clearly flagged up,” he said, pointing to recommendations that the university commission an independent review of distribution of power within the institution.

Management has said that the university’s governance will be assessed in 2014 as part of its regular five-yearly reviews.

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

Aberystwyth University president rejects 'dictatorship' claim by union

Allegations that one of Wales' leading universities is being run "like a dictatorship" have been dismissed by its president, Sir Emyr Jones Parry. The University and College Union (UCU) claims Aberystwyth University managers are behaving like school ground bullies and staff are fearful for their jobs. Sir Emyr said: "I don't believe the views set out are representative and I don't recognise the picture." The union also claims university staff were suspended over trivial matters. The university said it was "perplexed" by the accusations, which it said had not been brought to its attention.

Since new vice chancellor April McMahon took over the role in August 2011, 11 members of staff have been suspended and 13 have had their employment terminated, it has been reported. Martin Wilding, president of UCU at Aberystwyth, said staff were "literally looking over their shoulder," adding there was a sense they were under "constant surveillance".

He claimed there was also no sense of "due process" and "justice" over the suspensions, adding there was a conflict between management and staff that was "a sort of repressive relationship". "If people speak out they feel that they are going to be punished," he said. "There are rumours of people disappearing, and it sounds like a South American state when you say that, but people have sort of disappeared off the radar screen, as it were." He added: "Invariably people are brought into a meeting on a one-to-one basis and suspended and dragged off campus".

BBC Wales spoke to other current and former members of staff who declined to speak publically about their experiences of working at Aberystwyth University for fear of reprisals. But they claimed they were bullied, intimidated and harassed by senior managers.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, university president Sir Emyr Jones Parry said the union, one of four representing staff on the campus, had not formally raised any issue, even as recently as a scheduled meeting with management last week.

Sir Emyr Jones Parry said due process was 'rigorously applied' at Aberystwyth University. He said: "I don't believe the views set out are representative and I don't recognise the picture. "If there was any suggestion this was rampant in the university, believe me, I would have been on the case." "I'm not saying I haven't heard of the problems. They were not raised officially in any meeting." He rebutted the union's claim over a lack of due process in management actions. He said: "No-one has not been subject to due process. I can assure you. "Due process is rigorously applied in Aberystwyth."

The most high profile of the alleged suspensions involved two officers from the Aberystwyth arts centre - director Alan Hewson and operations manager Auriel Martin. Mr Hewson has retired and Ms Martin is the subject of an internal disciplinary investigation. Last month a protest stopped traffic on the campus in support of the pair but the university said it could not comment on matters involving individual members of staff. Councillor Sue Jones Davies claimed the relationship between the university and the town was strained.

More info at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23301526

Summer readings...

Update on Denis Rancourt academic freedom case


Bullying of a PhD Student - One Wrong Word/Death by Paper Cuts


Petition: Vice Chancellor, University of Leeds - Stop Treating International Students Like 2nd Class Citizens! 

 Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds

 The University of Ulster

 University of Leicester defies Information Commissioner (and gets away with it)

 Prof. Hassan Abdalla is still at it...
 

Update on Denis Rancourt academic freedom case

Dear colleagues,

As you probably know, the legal case of my 2009 dismissal from my tenured Full Professorship at the University of Ottawa has been on-going for many years:
http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/component/content/article/52.html

Well, the binding labour arbitration hearings are finally over! The last day of hearings was June 26, 2013. We expect the arbitrator Claude Foisy's decision within 4 to 6 months.

In my opinion, the hearing was a modern Socratic trial, with the University's arguments explicitly alternating between "corrupting the youth" and "insulting important people". The media reports thankfully saw this as a tactic.

Link to mainstream media reports about the final days of the hearings are given in this blog post:
http://uofowatch.blogspot.ca/2013/06/rancourt-arbitration-hearings-end-media.html

For example, this video about anarchists was played during the hearings in the lengthy cross-examination of me, because it was in one of my many YouTube playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScFU0UxKWA&list=PL74C8802F2EB649BE&index=1

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) attended virtually all the hearings:
http://ocla.ca/closing-arguments-in-u-of-o-academic-freedom-battle/

Cheers,

Denis Rancourt

Workplace Bullying in Higher Education

I know the old saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' but somehow I could not help doing just that with this book. An image of a sticking plaster over a bruised apple left me somewhat bemused. I was left wondering, what did this have to do with workplace bullying in higher education (HE).

I did consider the possibility of it referring to knowledge and the damage that is, potentially, being done by bullying in HE  institutions to future generations. That the developers, repositories and distributors of knowledge in society have issues with workplace bullying is not something that is a recent discovery; stories abound of high value, academics bullying doctoral researchers, junior faculty members and support staff in HE establishments. These academics are seen as untouchables because of the income that they generate and the impact that words from an esteemed professor could have on a future career.

HE is not really that different from other sectors and, like other sectors, this perception is being challenged quite strongly through the development of robust policies and procedures, training and management changes aimed at driving out what have been generationally embedded negative behaviours in some areas.

This book is written to help human resource (HR) professionals working in the HE sector understand what the current issues are surrounding workplace bullying. Although set in a USA context this does not limit the appeal or usefulness of the book; topics range from the current, limited, empirical research literature through to the different sub-cultures and biases that exist within financially restrained, historically bound, institutions.

It also provides well-researched observations on the legal and ethical implications of bullying. Of particular interest to me was the development of a model which links the social ecology of bullying with social reproduction theory. In brief, it suggests that bullying does not exist in a vacuum, it reflects the messages that seem to be prevalent in society (for example, the dominance of a subjective capitalism, the primacy of the victim, the demand for tolerance or intolerance) and suggests that HE institutions can fall into the trap of reproducing these inequalities by merely reporting the statistics on bullying rather than actually engendering change.

The authors set out a challenge to the institutions, almost in the form of an ethical demand, to move away from the current emphasis on statistics, characteristics and psychological profiling to a more systemic-based challenge to the societal embedded causes of, and supports for, bullying. The authors are clear that the book should not be read as an answer to the phenomenon of bullying rat herthat it is the beginning of a conversation; a conversation that needs more empirical evidence for it to progress in a meaningful direction. Maybe this was the point of the image on the cover of the book. The contributors seem to recognise that whatever they are offering is a sticking plaster to cover up a bruise as a temporary solution whilst they begin to explore the reasons as to why the bruise occurred in the first place. If this is their aim then, for me at least, the book is a success.

Damian Stoupe
Counsellor and workplace bullying doctoral researcher