Monday 5 August 2013

Copland victimisations: glimmer of hope?

Guest post by Mistleflower:

Michael Pavey, head of  Children and Families for Brent, yesterday posted this reply to a comment on my earlier post  ‘Deafening silence on Copland victimisation allegations’. LINK
‘ I met with the Unions last week and discussed these matters in detail. It's not appropriate to disclose our discussions with anonymous people on blogs but I'll continue to meet them and to take their concerns very seriously’
I may be being optimistic but, reading between the lines, it may be that Mr Pavey was as dismayed as Copland staff were by the tactics attempted  by Mr Marshall and Mr John  since they were drafted in to the school a few weeks ago:  victimisation, misuse of capability procedures  and threats of redundancy to those heads of department  unwilling to set up their own colleagues for redundancy.  

 Let’s hope that Mr Pavey  has,  now he’s been made aware of what’s been going on,‘had a word’. The test of this will be the future behaviour of the new management  but at least some  context has now been established. For now, the petty and vindictive treatment of the Humanities department ( or those few who remain) needs to be abandoned.

As far as the use of anonymity is concerned, this  is unfortunately  inevitable when a climate of fear has been intentionally introduced by managers  as a way of closing down open comment and discussion. There is a simple solution to this: regular and acknowledged communication based on mutual respect between management and genuine representatives of staff at  scheduled  meetings which are not unilaterally cancelled (or ‘postponed)’  and through  which management and genuine staff representatives attempt to come to agreement  in a civilised, professional  and collegiate fashion.  If someone hasn’t already stolen the name it could perhaps be called the ‘JCC’.

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