It’s why the tories are trying to bring down the unions so that they (and big business mates) can get away with this abhorent behaviour all the time
Bully v Bitch - interesting. What would she be if male? To me it’s a bully. And I am very concerned that she is meant to have been in HR
“She has a degree in anthropology and a masters degree in employment law” “In 2004, after being made redundant Allan set up Workplace Law Ltd providing advocacy and advice services to workers. She has served as an employment tribunal panellist” (good old wiki).
I hope she has nothing to do with giving advice on how to manage people ever again.
There are usually policies and proceedures regarding poor performance and ill health. These should have been adhered to and with some empathy. I can see why this person was off sick. Sickness is related to strees, being bullied and harrassed. Treat people with respect and they’ll stay. But I suppose many of these places don’t want that, they prefer hire and fire and keeping people on the edge so they accept whatever is offered regardless of shit pay and conditions, ‘your lucky to have a job’. I hope never to work in any place that Chertsey’s worked at.
It’s only after exceptional undercover work by Guardian journalists (again), at Sports Direct Factories in Shirebrook. That Mike Ashley will get off his fat ass and do something. I.E his financial backers pulling out, stock price falling.
But hire and fire is not bullying? It’s a legitimate way to manage a business and its workforce. People may not see it as correct, and it may be soul destroying to working in these places if you’re not up to the grade, but you know what you’re getting into when you go there. You know you’ll be working 14 hour days. You know the first fuck up and you’re out.
But I tell you what, it weeds out the chaff and the weak and leaves you with a sturdy, reliable workforce.
And by the way, that first statement is just bollocks. Just because this is a Tory idiot does not mean they are trying to get rid of the unions so that big business can get away with bullying staff. Big business already gets away with it. When was the last time you heard of the unions up in arms against a Barclays trader being handed his arse after two hours on the floor. You didn’t, because it doesn’t happen, because people know how these businesses work, and they buy in when they take the job.
Have a listen to this, Cherts. LBC have gone to town on this tonight, and we finally got a snippet on Daily Politics. I’d say it’s well worth having on in the background for an hour, but it’ll grab your attention too much for that to be true.
Responding to some of the points made on this thread, it’s almost certainly correct that there were more job opportunities around in the 70s. The one area where this differed from today was with sub-contract or self-employed labour: this was virtually non-existent within most unionised industries.
I’m not in a position to say whether or not the bullying culture has got worse, but it certainly existed back in the 70s despite the much higher profile of the unions. In fact, sometimes it cut both ways; for instance, one of the worse torrents of abuse I was ever subjected to occurred when, as an impressionable young eighteen-year-old (and fully paid up member of the union), I made the mistake of picking up my pencil in the drawing office during a lunch-break. The expletive-ridden tirade the union representative launched upon me for working in my own time (as opposed to the “fucking company’s time”) was something to behold!
As for Lucy Allan: she certainly doesn’t seem to have the attributes and qualities necessary to best represent her constituents - to put it mildly - and I think her position as an MP is untenable. But why did her campaign managers carry on campaigning for her if they were aware of her failings?
With the doctored emails and the bullying I think Allan has displayed all of the attributes and qualities required to hold down a senior position within cabinet.
This was not so much a bullying and hate campaign by someone who despises juniors and the worse off, it was just a pitch for promotion.
Last time I looked this government is brining in more difficult legislation for the unions. Unions are a pain for businesses. They helped to bring in some decent working conditions like holidays and minimum wage. How bloody awful of them. Yes unions have already been lost in many places. Particularly where they have privatised public sector and utilities.
Hiring and firing isn’t bullying. But it just makes having a stable work and home life difficult. Will I have a job next week, can I pay my bills next week? Surely that is a stressful and probably depressing way to live. I am not sure it weeds out poor workers rather than produce anxiety riden workers more likely to make mistakes and then get fired?
I’ve worked in local government a long time. Some people would think I am one of those work shy people who couldn’t cut it in the “real life work” place. I have worked on the other side too where you’d get sacked on the office floor in front of Cole ages. Not particularly humane.
Anyway it looks like Chets and I won’t see eye to eye on this. And that’s fine.
The Lucy Allan thing rolls on with another new development. Startlingly, Lucy has not made another complete cock up of communication. This relates to one she prepared, posted and deleted very quickly afterwards - in which she accused Labour councillors of all kinds of skulduggery. They are now threatening legal action if she does not apologise.
Shifting back to the capital, Zac Goldsmith, the Tory mayoral candidate, is attracting criticism for running a negative campaign in London.
There are a couple of Dave Hill pieces in the Guardian covering a couple of aspects of the contest. First, Corbyn’s position on air strikes in Syria is probably helping Sadiq Khan.
Londoners were also happier - much happier - than everyone else with Corbyn’s handling of the crisis in Syria, with 44% declaring themselves satisfied compared with 40% dissatisfied. Everywhere else, Corbyn’s ratings by this measure were even more heavily in the negative than David Cameron’s. In London, the prime minister’s Syria performance satisfied only 32% and dissatisfied exactly twice that proportion.
Goldsmith may also unwittingly be aiding Khan in this endeavor. Despite the fact that Khan and Corbyn come from different parts of Labour, the Tory campaign has done all it can to tie the two together.
An official Tory website called SadiqWatch, launched on Monday, asks the question: “Who is Sadiq Khan?” This draws attention to Khan’s recent change of position over increasing London’s airport capacity – he’s switched from wanting expansion at Heathrow to enlarging Gatwick – the support he received from unions during Labour’s mayoral candidate selection campaign and his nomination of Jeremy Corbyn to be a runner in the party’s leadership contest.
There is also some consolation for Corbyn in Londoners’ responses to a general question about his leadership of Labour. The national poll response shows little long-term change in satisfaction ratings for Cameron as prime minister, with 41% saying they are satisfied and 55% saying the opposite. That looks pretty poor except when put next to Corbyn’s scores: only one in three are satisfied with him as Labour leader while 50% are dissatisfied.
The SNP reckon the Tories have been trialling a new system that’ll enable claimants to told they are being sanctioned on Christmas Eve. Did it for the first time last year.
The Independent had previously reported the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) would be running a “business as usual” approach to Christmas this year, and was accused of taking a “Scrooge-like approach” to the season.
In new claims denied by the DWP, the SNP say this will be only the second year the approach has been taken, after a series of unwritten “special operations” were scrapped that previously protected claimants from having their Christmases ruined.
The party said concerns were raised by DWP staff themselves, who told the SNP they were made to call people up with bad news on Christmas Eve for the first time last year, and were unhappy they had to implement the alleged change in policy.
There’s never a good time to sack anyone either, but it’s generally seen as fucking bad form and somewhat callous.
I can remember a Christmas where mum had thirty quid total, to sort us all out. She was crying her eyes out in undeserved shame; it actually turned out to be one of our best Christmases ever. All four of us kids saw the bigger picture, and didn’t give her or each other any shit. And we still had thirty quid, so we got to do dinner and everything.
This whole sanctions regime needs to be urgently reviewed. They’re shitty enough, but to leave families with fuck all in the festive season of goodwill is disgraceful. How much money will they actually save? If we see even one parent top themselves because this breaks the camel’s back, then the cost is too high.
I hate these sanctions, and everything about them. Although there need to be controls, they need to be much fairer than they currently are. IDS is a fucking loon though.
In a past role I dealt with a lot of people coming to us as their benefits had been stopped and this was before all these changes. So it is likely to have increased. So they don’t pay out in benefits but other streams of money are used (children’s services). Tax payer still paying but from a much smaller limited budget. I think they should pay a minimum to be able to pay bills and eat whilst they work out what they’re entitled to. Over paid? take a small amount back each week. No one should be left with nothing in our v rich country.
David Cameron’s policy chief Oliver Letwin is in some serious hot water over advice he gave to Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s. Among other things, he blocked a fund for young black entrepenuers, citing they’d only invest it in “disco & drugs”. He also reckons white people don’t riot.
This is someone that was educated at Eton College, before going onto Trinity College, Cambridge. It reflects almost as badly on them, imo.
Letwin has apologised, but I’m not convinced. These are views he expressed as both an adult and a minister of the crown. It certainly doesn’t help that underlying societal problems were similarly dismissed after the 2011 riots. “Pure criminality”, they said.
Must have been all them black people. White people don’t riot, according to Oliver Letwin. The ones you saw on the news _must _have been black people “pinked up” for the day.
