Bullying at work, and Newsnight on the Archbishop of Canterbury

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK

Employment Law: Bullying at work
Recently I've had cause to help someone with their complaint of bullying in the workplace. I have to say that it has been a very demoralising experience for me. It is quite clear that for all the posters, leaflets, online advice and procedures, organisations are able to ignore genuine grievances about bullying, and to protect managers who bully by pretending that their actions (as long as carefully subtle or conducted 1 to 1) are reasonable. The guy I met who chaired the investigation into the bullying has young children himself. I wondered what he'll feel if they get bullied and he complains about it.

The law requires organisations to have hearings and processes and allow friends to attend hearings to help. Unfortunately it doesn't force them to use good judgement. So when the manager in question was called to answer for their bullying tactics they slagged their accuser off for being incompetent & whipped up some stooges to back them up. The summary of the investigation had the gall to say a 'majority' of people agreed with the bullying manager's assessment.

Back on planet Earth, personal performance criticisms, unwarranted and unjustified ones at that, are not excuses for bullying. Even the report said there was no excuse for bullying, but then proceeded to use personal performance as just such an excuse!

It got worse: After jumping through all the procedural hoops of complaining and having one's name thoroughly blackened for one's trouble, the next step was to appeal to a higher authority through the organisation's 'grievance procedure'. This was a senior 'backside coverer' who was so desperate to back up everything the first report said that they even ignored the points that the author of the first report was prepared to concede!

I was moved to feel that this is the legacy of Blair's Britain: Blair was the 'hearing' Prime Minister. 'I hear what you say' was the catchphrase. Yes, he heard what we said in detail, but through his bizarre misguided (and now we learn religious) principles, he felt empowered to completely ignore the valid points carefully raised and peacefully put forward by everyone from the Pope to millions of protestors in London. He organised the 'hearing' of the Hutton Report, which gave him the 'all clear' for his behaviour.

These events set a very powerful hypocrisy in place, which has become a model for all sorts of behaviour, such as the grievance hearing I attended. It basically allows the authority figures to listen carefully & thoughtfully to all the arguments put to them, and then completely ignore them as if they were irrelevant. It's like when someone crashes into your car and no matter how much it's obviously their fault they refuse to acknowledge it, for fear of invalidating their insurance. What's worse is they put on a big show of how seriously they take bullying, how important it is to understand the victim's predicament, and then they leave the situation to fester unchecked. The bully is even refreshed, knowing that they have effectively become above the rules and have licence to bully.

I find myself thinking biblically that like in Noah's day, maybe the tide of water that global warming may bring our way, will wash this appalling hypocrisy out of our lives, and replace it with genuine helpful friendship for one another's survival and well being. The current bullying laws provide scant protection to employees, and if anything prolong the unpleasantness by procedures of complaint that are an utter and dreadful sham.

TV Review : Newsnight discusses the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments on Sharia law
Back in 1981 at Manchester University Students Union, I was appalled and incensed when watching a debate on a motion in support of terrorism in the Middle East. A student from the Middle East was prevented from talking against the motion by a white male middle class student union official because he was having difficulty speaking English. Despite the repeated mantra of anti-racism of the Union, this official (a kid given a grown-up job) was using his position to discriminate against someone of another race whose views he found inconvenient.

Roll on 26 years and I hear Paxman, who I recently praised, riding roughshod over an Oxford scholar trying to calm down a discussion about Sharia law. The fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury didn't appear to have said what Paxman and Douglas Murray (from the 'centre for social cohesion') wanted to argue about, didn't stop them. It was exactly like news parody 'The Day Today'. The news programme was deliberately 'picking a fight' amongst its guests. Apparently the great British public is ready to react violently against anyone talking about Sharia law whatever they are saying. Like when they attacked a paediatrician that they thought was a paedophile.

A day later and the Archbishop is being criticised because he didn't appreciate that his comments would be wilfully misunderstood in such ways. What would God make of all this?

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]