Tag Archives: HR

KLU KLUX KULTURE BOSS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

mussolini
Mussolini: would have been awarded a generous severance payment in 1943 from Bristol City Council HR

Is Bristol City Council developing a brand new severance policy especially for their racist bosses?

It looks like Genieve “Klu Klux” Adkins has been disappeared on long term leave for “personal reasons” following the Bristolian story earlier this week about her  racist outbursts. Isn’t being told to stay at home while you’re investigated generally called ‘a suspension’ when you’re not a senior city council boss?

This ‘leave’ gives the dodgy Bristol City Council HR team, now under the guidance of council timeserver, Steph “Who?” Griffin, some time to work out what the hell to do with the racist nutter they’ve employed and to organise a generous settlement payment to quietly ease her out the door.

Given the council’s loud commitment to equalities, will this open the floodgates for similar actions? Have tired and fed up senior bosses secured a new route to getting enhanced redundancy payments and large undisclosed settlements?

All you seem to have to do is work for the authority for a least 3 months. Organise a meeting with staff and members of the public, ensuring that you have some black and Asian attendees, and then spout some incoherent racist nonsense to the startled audience. Bingo!  The council will pay you to fuck off somewhere else with a settlement payment and an agreed reference saying how lovely you are with no mention that you’re a racist.

Gone are the days when gross misconduct could lead to dismissal. Instead you get a nice little holiday and a large wedge off the council taxpayer. Because, rest assured, this cost will come out of your council tax.  

Knackered council workers are telling us that the council cannot afford to pay for services like libraries, parks, housing, museums, transport or social care and these will have to go or be sold. 

But it’s not all bad and you, as a local resident can help. When the council put up your council tax to pay for this, there will not be any services left. So the ignorant council bosses you’re still paying for will not have a lot to actually manage any more.  Instead they can have a nice little rest and work on devising their lucrative route out of the council courtesy of Steph Griffin and her poodle Human Resources Committee of councillors.

Don’t forget, keep working excessive hours until you drop and keep on paying your taxes while not being able to afford to put on your heating or have a pot noodle for Sunday lunch.  We are all in this together (although some are a lot more together than others). 

Can we wish Geniveve all the best for the future and her new job? Perhaps in Italy? Writing up Mussolini’s memoirs? 

“COMMON ACTIVITIES”: THREE WAVES OF BULLSHIT

New Briefing Arrives for BCC’s Homelessness Prevention Team

Homeless directive

In July, a Bristol City Council managerial team led by HR taskmaster John “Bedwetter” Walsh produced a 12 page, full colour glossy pile of vomit called ‘Common Activities – Briefing for The Homelessness Prevention Team’.

Complete with “flow charts” and other meaningless diagrams, no doubt employing external graphic designers at an undisclosed sum, Bedwetter and his team of useless flunkies churned out “inclusive” speech hogwash by the bucket load. All packaged to please the uncritical eyes of the Reverend Mayor and his team of sycophants, simultaneously confusing the general public and rank-and-file employees alike, and/or boring them stupid.

Common Absurdities

Once you’ve read through the 12 pages of utter drivel and after exhaustively eliminating the “positive” buzzwords that saturate it – like “shared objectives” and “creating a city of hope and aspiration” – and distilled it down to an essence that could be easily comprehended in a single paragraph, you’re left with this:

Bristol City Council is cutting back £1 million from its £53 million staffing budget. This will be achieved by “generalising” tasks, and “fusing” any coal-face posts that “do the same job” in the eyes of management. They also reserve the right to “make further savings where possible”.

These measures are currently being introduced in three “waves” that are supposed to wash over Bristol City Council in the course of July.

Considering the number of unproductive bullshit job staff and “professional support officers” involved and the costs of dreaming up and implementing such a complicated and probably unnecessary process, surely one could ask if the £1 million savings could have been far easier met elsewhere?

Maybe by simply firing Bedwetter and his ever-swelling entourage of goons and flunkies?

TUPE TRANSFER WATCH #3: IS IT RACIST (SLIGHT RETURN)?

Further analysis of the Equalities Impact Assessment (EqIA) for the transfer of Bristol City Council cleaners and security to Bristol Waste reveals that over 36 per cent of the staff involved are black, not 34 per cent as we claimed last week. The increase is because we didn’t include groups such as Pakistani and Black Caribbean/White who are underrepresented among cleaners and security.

It is also noteworthy that, despite allegedly running a ‘comprehensive’ consultation with these staff, the council does not know the ethnicity of 42 out of 215 of them. That’s 19.5 per cent of this workforce. This is over double the ‘unknown’ figure for the whole city council workforce, which stands at 9 per cent. Could more work have gone into the council’s ‘comprehensive’ consultation of cleaners and security?

The EqIA is also unfinished. Here’s what we find at the end of the report:

EqIA

Will Bristol City Council go ahead and outsource staff on the basis of an unfinished EqIA and a one page ‘comprehensive’ consultation that fails to state what staff said about the transfer? Is such a set of circumstances even policy compliant?

Meanwhile, the council’s Equality and Inclusion Progress Report 2019-20  tells us ,“a review of our Equality and Diversity Function in 2018 identified that equality impact assessments were often undertaken after, rather than before, service design or service changes have been proposed.”

Nothing’s changed since 2018 then.

Maybe proper EqIA’s are only needed for jazzy management and professional  job changes at Bristol City Council?

Rotten Comrades: Unfair Dismissal Appeals and Other Problems For Our Class

By The Dwarf

It is commonly recognised that appeals to government bodies very often help. As a rule of thumb I would say appealing loss of benefit or a parking ticket should give you around a fifty-fifty chance (should you have some sort of excuse), so you may as well have a punt. I say usually, that is if you appeal anywhere else but at Bristol City Council where properly mandated, democratically elected bodies no longer seem to be able to action their decisions. We’ve seen this recently with the special education needs appeals but we also see it in both Councillor and Mayoral inability to control council officers.

Controlling council officers is a political problem because, for reasons of national policy, council officers have the right to (effectively) water down possibly loony council decision-making. Sort of. Essentially. So it is quite hard for the Mayor to sack someone if there is a democratic decision to do something and nobody puts that into action properly. This decentralised style of administration trickles down further to organisations such as local authority controlled schools who have the right to do whatever they damn well please while being funded by us.

So, when a struggling single mother with a handful of a child (perhaps with profound learning difficulties) wins her appeal to have a better specialist education for her child, the school refuses to obey the decision, making the whole process a hopeless waste of time. What then happens, the appeals team try and gauge what the school will accept before giving up and making some sort of feeble, virtue-signalling non-decision.

“So, Brother D,” you might ask – “what has this got to do with the unions?” Well, I’m glad you asked. First off, this is about class, both for struggling mums and dads in an uncaring society, but also about having a functioning, municipal democracy. And secondly, this trickle down of irresponsibility and intransigence is affecting the staff too.

The appeals committee which hears dismissal appeals from our staff, has for some time given up trying to reinstate staff who are innocent or who are naughty but don’t quite deserve sacking; but do deserve to be given a kick up the backside before being told to get back to work. I’m not saying the odd one or two haven’t charmed their way out of the ‘long walk’, but the majority haven’t, in my and the other comrade’s experience. I used to be quite happy, back in the day, making the usual ritual protest while the member got the dressing down of their lives, taking comfort in the fact that we’ve managed to avoid another walk of shame to the dole office (or worse). But HR (you know the weaponised, smiling assassins I wrote about last time) now make it clear such actions are impossible.

Since then, the kindly old gentleman chairman, firebrand eco-warrior and old class warrior we normally get invited to address, offer the staff member a nice cup of tea, a bit of sympathy and a biscuit, before tapping the member on the shoulder and showing him the door. I preferred the kick up the arse and reinstatement.

More recently, the tea and biscuits have also gone.

Which makes the whole process a complete, bollocking, waste of time, because we then go off and win a tribunal. The point of the appeal is to set right unfair dismissals: they should consider the matter with open minds and bravely overrule, if that is the just decision, regardless of the pressure from HR. It does beg the question what sort of feedback auditing there is to the committee so that it can review how well it has done.

There is more to say about HR and its militant strategy of getting people out the door regardless of the settlement cost, and just how motivated they are in doing this, but I’ll leave it to next time.

Solidarity,
Brother D

COUNCIL’S BEDWETTER-AHAB ALLIANCE HUNT DOWN DOCK’S DISABLED

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”

A judgement slipped out by the Employment Tribunal on September 25, studiously ignored by our local mainstream media, is yet another nail hammered firmly into the coffin of Bristol City Council HR. The council department led by arch-discriminator and the Reverend Rees’s BULLY-IN-CHIEF John “Bedwetter” Walsh.

An interim judgement published by the tribunal announces, “The claims of unfair dismissal and of DISCRIMINATION ARISING FROM DISABILITY in respect of the dismissal of the claimant from employment (on 25th of April 2019) is well founded.”

Yes, Bristol City Council are firing staff for being disabled. A finding of disability discrimination means an uncapped award for the claimant, which may cost council taxpayers a lot of money. Surely this is all a huge embarrassment for a LABOUR COUNCIL that likes to waffle on about their exceptional commitment to equality and diversity at every opportunity?

This latest equalities and diversity shambles comes courtesy of Bristol City Council Docks Service and is, therefore, the handiwork of one of The BRISTOLIAN’s oldest friends, Docks boss Cap’n Tony “Ahab” Nichol. This notorious bully and serial incompetent – who describes his own supervisory staff as ‘WANKERS‘ when they’re out of earshot – should have been fired back in 2014 after a series of proven incidents of him bullying his staff. 

Instead he was let off after a reactionary old white man middle manager investigating the case retired before completing an extraordinarily long investigation. Ahab’s bosses then decided he could issue an apology and attend an equalities workshop with his staff instead.

Fat lot of use this workshop was if Ahab is now firing and DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THE DISABLED with apparent impunity and a corporate cheque book at the ready to fix any expensive mess he makes. We understand that as many as THREE disabled staff may have been offloaded by Ahab so far.

This latest disgrace also raises more questions about Director of Workforce, Bedwetter and what’s going on in his HR department as yet more INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICE comes to light at Bristol City Council. Ahab would have been advised and supported by Bedwetter’s HR team throughout his deliberate effort to discriminate against the disabled.

An appeal panel of well-remunerated ‘expert’ and ‘objective’ SENIOR DIRECTORS also would have signed off this dismissal on the advice of Bedwetter’s HR. Institutional discriminatory practice continues to RUN RAMPANT through the corridors of Bristol City Council unchecked and, as always, ends at the door of Bedwetter’s HR department.

How much longer will councillors tolerate Bedwetter and his nasty little regime of discrimination and bullying? Isn’t it about time they dismantled this rogue department and kicked Bedwetter’s sorry arse back to where it belongs in the1970s blokey culture of some provincial Yorkshire town? Then they can tie a large weight to the revolting Ahab and throw him into his dock for us.

Maybe that was what a TOP SECRET HR Committee meeting last week was discussing with Bedwetter and all of his senior HR team of racists, bullies and abusers? Or were they all CONSPIRING on another crude cover-up to maintain bully Bedwetter in post so that he can keep any uppity staff – who insist on taking their employment and human rights seriously – in their place for his Labour Party political masters?

How much longer can our scumbag council maintain the lie?

KEYSTONE COUNCIL (Part1)

Rees cop

Heard the one about Bristol City Council pointlessly hiring an expensive HR consultant to run a disciplinary against a member of staff the great all-powerful Reverend Rees decided he wanted sacked? A disciplinary is normally a straightforward job any competent middle manager would do at the council. Was there, maybe, something a little abnormal about this particular process then?


Possibly, as they had to hire another HR consultant to hear a grievance regarding the conduct of the first consultant’s investigation! Now, we’re told by our trade union brothers, the council is hiring yet another consultant to investigate the conduct of both of the previous consultants! Will this deranged cycle of HR consultants at our expense ever end?

More to the point, after all this huge expenditure, did the Reverend get his man?

HAMPSHIRE NAG KILLING STAFF TO IMPROVE THEIR WELLBEING

virus

Have you heard the one about the appalling new ‘WELLBEING’ MANAGER at Bristol City Council who has triggered multiple complaints by council staff to HR for bullying? Please step forward ISLE OF WIGHT RESIDENT Christina “The Nag” Czarkowski Crouch, who didn’t rock up at the Counts Louse six months ago to start work as the council’s new  Safety, Health and Wellbeing Manager. 

Covid has proved a boon for this former Head of Risk and Safety at Hampshire County Council – who retired from there “UNDER A CLOUD” – as she’s only had to come to Bristol ONCE IN SIX MONTHS. Leaving this ridiculous Tory bint plenty of time to indulge in her expensive hobby running a riding school and poncing about at dressage events.

Less happy are trade unions at the council who tell us that there’s “a plan to get everyone back to work at the council based on an IDEOLOGICAL HR PLAN“. A plan enthusiastically fronted by a Hampshire resident safely tucked away in a home office 130 miles away who doesn’t see any need to come near one of her ‘safe’ workplaces in Bristol any time soon. Unions also tell us The Nag got paid a generous MOVING ALLOWANCE by us when she got the job but obviously hasn’t bothered moving to Bristol. What’s she done with our money?

The Nag’s current job at the council is to sign off – from a safe long distance – UNSAFE WORKPLACES and offices at the council as, er, safe. This corporate ‘wellbeing’ expert has done this by BULLYING staff into signing off her dodgy risk assessments and telling them that if they don’t do what she says, SHE WILL MAKE THEM LEAVE! Unions sources say The Nag is anti-union too and has refused to speak with them, let alone account for her efforts to kill council staff.

Multiple complaints regarding The Nag have now landed in Bristol City Council’s HR inbox. Although so far her bosses, the council’s mentally unstable Head of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, A NOTORIOUS BULLY himself, and his hopelessly thick and useless yes-man sidekick, Director of HR Mark “Bashar” Williams, have done FUCK ALL. Mainly on the basis that this pair of turds view bullying as top quality management practice that needs to be encouraged. Unless any bullying is aimed at them of course.

Why can’t city council staff just man up a bit and be prepared to die of Covid for a bunch of management cowards and bullies hiding in expensive homes around the UK?

ROTTEN COMRADES: Manoeuvring People Out of Their Jobs and Then Buying Their Silence

By The Dwarf

I’ve been watching for some time Bristol City Council’s war against its own staff, but it becomes particularly vicious in light of the coronavirus situation. The suppression of our black whistle-blowers continues apace and the dismissal and downgrading of our disabled staff has been made worse by the pandemic because there aren’t any safe roles to be redeployed into. But nonetheless, BCC won’t let an impossible job market get in the way of following an unethical and discriminatory policy to the bitter end, no matter how illegal it is.

I’ve written at length about this (see Smiter passim). The message, I think, has got through but they sadly have no shame and continue down the same road anyway. There is one member of the cabinet who is genuinely interested in these affairs and has tried to rectify these problems but the chain of command is so long it becomes like a game of Chinese whispers. Instructions and queries are garbled on the way down and replies obfuscated on the way up. When reports are written (for example, the workforce survey which jumped across the management chain and informed leaders directly) the facts are obfuscated by legal agreements that prevent disclosure and therefore the reasons for staff unhappiness aren’t shown.

And here we come to the nub of it. Bitter disputes between management and staff (grievances, disciplinaries and capability hearings) are being hidden by settlement agreements that have non-disclosure clauses. This means that if BCC discriminates against a member of staff and gets its chequebook out so no one can talk about it. This situation often happens when staff reach the point where appeals have failed and they are left with the option of either taking a settlement or going to court. You can’t blame them for settling when the council starts writing a cheque that equals what they would expect in court but without all the stress, but the process prevents the leadership of the organisation from seeing staff being manoeuvred into their predicament and then being bought off. The council is buying the silence of people it victimises.

So, even if a discriminatory event takes place that has been identified (like manoeuvring out most of the black staff from a department during a restructure and then making it impossible to stay at your own grade if you manage to hang on in there) any subsequent agreement not to go to court about it can’t be talked about. So we can’t learn from it. So the narrative that there was no discrimination at all is maintained and black staff, apparently, weren’t “a cabal” as reported. (You know who you are.)

Of course our black staff aren’t the only ones who are frightened, because our disabled, sick and older staff are too. It’s quite clear that quite a few of our staff are clinically vulnerable to the coronavirus (BCC used to be disability-friendly) and have shielded. Except a lot of these instructions to shield were rescinded. Some have cancer, some have heart conditions or hypertension and others have diabetes. Others have family members with the same sort of impairments and need to shield for their sake. When the instruction not to shield (unless you matched very strict criteria) came in, the staff phoned in sick and got a doctor’s note because they were in danger. BCC is now having sickness absence hearings for these people (some of which are the last stage, stage three). They promised not to penalise people who were sick because of coronavirus and they have gone back on this promise. How I really feel about this behaviour is just not reportable.

All of this is led by a well-motivated, well-organised human resources team. They enable the worst excesses of managers and provide custom-crafted tool-kits for those managers to demote, redeploy, harass and dismiss staff who do little more than stand up for statutory rights such as whistle-blowing and protecting themselves from danger.

It’s about time HR was reorganised. Hopefully they can then get a taste of their own medicine.

OFFICIAL: “WE’RE INCOMPETENT” ADMIT SENIOR COUNCIL BOSSES

contract

The enthusiasm with which our serially useless senior council bosses are suddenly embracing advertising their INCOMPETENCE is a new and novel innovation for our Counts Louse’s Third Floor DEPARTMENT OF DUNCES.

Their public confessional follows a report from Green Councillor and Audit Committee vice chair Clive “Shakin'” Stevens into how former chief exec Anna “Big Wedge” Klonowski walked away from Bristol in 2017 after just SIX MONTHS’ OF INDIFFERENT WORK with £98k in her pocket. Shaky, was given access to carefully selected top secret documents by dodgy council bosses and has devised a personal “MOST LIKELY SCENARIO” regarding the payout.

Shaky claims it was all down to SERIAL INCOMPETENCE and council bosses are queuing up to cheerfully admit it. Not least because their only other option would be to admit to UNLAWFUL ACTIVITY. What Shaky alleges transpired is that Big Wedge’s colleague and associate, Jackie “You’re Fired!” McGeachie – the former Tesco exec turned jobbing senior local authority HR interim – “ACCIDENTALLY” sent the wrong Chief Exec contract to lawyers in 2017, which allegedly entitled Big Wedge to a big wedge and, er, nobody noticed it was the wrong contract until it was too late.

However, Shaky’s “most likely scenario”, which we’re invited to believe over “the conspiracy theories”, raises as many questions as it answers. For instance, if the payment to Klonowski was an error, WHY AREN’T WE ASKING FOR IT BACK? And what type of contract was sent by Big Wedge’s personally appointed HR boss that allows someone to resign and scarper with immediate effect but contractually obliges the employer to fork out six months’ pay in lieu of notice? AN UNPRECEDENTED ARRANGEMENT Shaky fails to explain.

Of course, this mysterious ‘top secret ROGUE CONTRACT remains safely locked away from the public, despite, by Shaky’s definition, being an out-of-date generic document and not personal information relating to a named individual. Shaky also says he discovered evidence of “GROSS OBFUSCATION” or “A COVER-UP” from bosses over the payment. Only to meekly announce “they should be ashamed”. But why isn’t Shaky recommending IMMEDIATE DISCIPLINARY ACTION against them? Why would anyone want bent and dishonest bosses to remain in post running our council?

Is it because these bosses might start revealing what really happened and who authorised paying Klonowski £98k of hush money that we weren’t obliged to pay?