People
Issue No. 24 - August/September 2005
Want skilled staff? Don’t bully them
by Colin Pearce
I have heard about a gaggle of halfwits who operate a company we’ll call Clot and Co. They have NO occupational health and safety procedures whatever – and they are not alone.
There are hundreds like them. Nothing thought up, nothing written down, nothing reinforced, nothing ever said, except, “Hmmmmmm! Yeah!! communist pinko lefties thought that up. We’re not like that around here.”
Seriously, how can you be that thick and still get your hat on? It’s the law!!
What would you think of the following organisation if you came across it?
When an employee approached a manager about a bullying issue and another approached the same manager about the poor way she was being managed, the manager in question (who I suspect won his job in a packet of Quaker’s Oats) ‘kindly’ told the employees that their view of bullying was mistaken and ‘kindly’ advised it was very dangerous to “go down that path” — which is, of course, just more bullying, even victimisation under most Oc. Health and Safety legislation.
Employees are regularly sworn at, cursed, given the cold shoulder, gossiped about by supervisors, and (through nothing else than amateurish planning skills at management level) given last-minute jobs at closing time and told to stay back in their own time and finish assignments, often until midnight or on weekends.
I heard about an employee who had similar complaints about unpaid overtime. She wanted to go out with her boyfriend ‘like normal people’ but she was told it would be better for her boyfriend to to spend less time with her so she could work back more regularly — up to five hours on any given night in the week for no extra pay.
“After all, we’re paying you, not your boyfriend!” she was told.
This is 19th century Ebeneezer Scrooging at its worst and in most civilised countries — apart from the fact that it is rude, crude and ugly — it is again...
