Reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr
July 2, 2024 * — There are fewer than 48 hours before the UK elections on July 4 and the triggering stories are everywhere.
US “Supreme Court hands (President Donald) Trump broad immunity” (Financial Times). “Trump asks for hush money conviction to be overturned” (BBC).
I feel like a tiny, inadequate version of the former president favored to win another term later this year.
The office I’m seeking is much smaller – I want to be the independent member of British Parliament for the constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster.
Like Trump, I’m facing what seems like multiple counts of lawfare….(like him) I reckon I’ve not done anything wrong … and a key difference is I certainly have no way of stacking some Supreme Court so I can obtain king-like immunity to get bad judgements overturned.
While Trump is being attacked via lawfare for his bad behavior …such as for interfering with a democratic hand over of power or for not properly accounting for an alleged “hush money” bribe to an alleged former sexual partner…I’m apparently being hounded by the same(ish) deep state because I tried to do the right thing.
(I’m too ambitious on climate action apparently … while Trump is not hawkish enough)
Made with help of Faceapp overlay mode / Britannica of Trump / CarrZee of me/ Iggy Carr mockup
I wanted the rich and powerful and their lawyers to be held to account for their failings, for misleading the British courts. Especially … for their failure to protect the climate. I regard myself as a whistleblower.
I was fired by Bloomberg in May 2020 … I believe because I kept complaining about the bad climate news coverage.
Bloomberg was just trying to protect its fossil-fuel business, people whisper to me. Don’t you get it? They say. They are for the 1%, right?
Yes I get it … but Bloomberg knows it’s unsustainable, it’s against the UN Paris deal … and now this in the FT on the weekend:
Just last week I again felt harassed by the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which seems to be acting to disrupt British democracy in action … because the timing of the missive is just a few days before the election.
It was also a day after Britain freed Julian Assange — also a climate whistleblower in part — to my home country, Australia.
I highlight the document above because the court is asking for documents it knows do not exist. (The court declined to comment when I asked about this in a phone call last Friday.)
When I put in a second whistleblowing/unfair dismissal claim to Bloomberg LP and the courts in 2020, the respondent, one of the most powerful media companies on earth, should have sent a second “ET3” response in reply to defend my claim, yet it never did, apparently.
So there is only one ET3. Why is the court asking for more than one? Lawfare is the answer — where mean, or perhaps worse people use legal processes to place financial and psychological pressure on those calling out wrongdoing.
Because the Respondent failed to respond, I should have won the case back then circa 2020. But why not just ignore that and hurt him some more, is what Bloomberg is thinking?
So the costly litigation has been carrying on for another four years and now I’m in huge financial debt.
In another blow to my campaigning for UK office last month and this week, my lawyer in a criminal case (where I have not even been charged yet for something I’m alleged to have done on March 2) abandoned me for no good reason. (I didn’t do what I’m accused of btw.)
I had questioned whether my lawyer was doing everything possible for me as it appeared to me that she was acting like an agent for the police against me … rather than for me against the police.
After a bit more tooing and froing …this arrives:
So that’s another layer or two of ridiculousness. The law, it turns out, it an actual arse. I’m sure it’s my fault. That’s what the other sides seem to imply.
With the UK media focused on polls, political sleaze and immigration rather than policy to help the people, the British folk don’t seem to understand how much is at stake on Thursday.
I tried to use the courts to get climate justice because of Bloomberg’s failing news coverage of the climate crisis. What I got was a lesson that the courts are there to protect wealth and the billionaires…not ordinary folk like me.
The supposed fourth arm of government — the free press — is not reporting that much about how Britain’s rule of law is being eroded.
So the judiciary, the billionaires and the press seem free to collude rather than scrutinize each other as they should.
Famed right-wing journalist Tucker Carlson agrees this is not an isolated problem:
It should not be the guy who discovers the crime who goes to jail. It should be the guy who commits the crime: Carlson
So I’m now learning.
Apparently, I don’t own my truth, even though I lived it (including those 15 or so hours in Stoke Newington lockup for something I didn’t do on March 2).
This is the cell I was placed in – yes — you can see it from the main street!
Bloomberg LP owns the truth (and the British justice system, it seems). (Bloomberg was a platinum sponsor of the late Queen of England’s jubilee, if you remember … or if you doubt there are UK-US establishment links taking advantage of these judicial weaknesses/failings.)
It’s not just me saying it. Read this from investigative author Tom Bugis:
Burgis pointed out how it works last month to the “Disorder” podcast:
Burgis: “Those who would resist corruption in the Niger Delta or Angola or Kazakhstan, they’re not going to find accountability through their own institutions, because those are shadow institutions at the mercy of kleptocrats [in those countries].
“They’re going to find that [justice] through the institutions that police the corporations that do the corruption — so the law enforcement agencies of Western Europe and North America, right?
“In that sense, billions of people depend on these law enforcement agencies [and justice systems because they are supposedly not captured by kleptocrats], … and what you have in the UK and to a lesser extent, in the US, is a magnificent set of statues against corruption and money laundering and indeed, fraud in the hands of law enforcement agencies.
“The [regulators have] got the right name. They’ve got some talented people in them, but what they don’t have any money.
“They are hopelessly outgunned again and again. We get situations they sort of often hop between civil and criminal cases, but you get situations where corporations and oligarchs just financially outgun, out muscle the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency, by ludicrous factors to make the fight completely uneven.”
So this is what I’m finding out in my own cases. Only in my case the judiciary is either outgunned or in thrall of Bloomberg’s legal help.
It might be mean to apply kleptocrat to Bloomberg owner Mike Bloomberg … but certainly oligarch can apply.
It sounds familiar to me with my parallel civil and criminal proceedings. I’m horrendously outgunned. But my enemy is not in Africa or eastern Europe or Russia, it’s a giant global corporation based in New York — Bloomberg LP.
Who’d have thunk from a UN special climate envoy?
The toll on me and my family’s mental health has been substantial.
Please help if can, and bring this into the public debate over the next two days. Especially if you know someone who lives in the constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster — tell them real change is needed to stand up to these billionaires. Reverting to the samey same political parties (Labour and Tories) just won’t work. (continues below)
Last Push
I’m not convinced the favorite to win the UK election Keir Starmer (Labour) is properly seeking a mandate to improve the legal system and stand up to billionaires.
Indeed he’s conflicted because of his role prosecuting Assange and because he was in charge when vile paedophile Jimmy Savile escaped prosecution.
If I win office, I’ll try to ensure this type of lawfare behavior stops in Britain. And I promise to stand up to billionaires as much as possible. I’m not saying it will be easy.
I’ve been advocating for better whistleblowing laws, for instance, where regulators can forward portions of bounties to those who bring bad behavior to light (something that the Dept of Justice already does in the US).
There needs to be culture change across British government and the judicial industry a shift from the cover-up culture responsible for years of delay for ordinary people severely damaged by poisoned blood, shitty Post Office software, burning buildings, crap healthcare, greedy nursing homes and bad education regulation (I could go on and on).
The judiciary should not be favoring the rich, yet it does.
Governments should not be able to use the police and courts to quieten journalists/academics/workers/doctors/carers who they find pesky….or in the case of Trump …the current US administration should not be able to curtail candidates for the Presidency who they don’t like.
Yet, lawfare is in the eye of the beholder, so none of this is easy.
Dealing in a better way with these topics were meant to be some of the lessons from Assange’s whistleblowing and his hard-fought freedom. Yet his freedom appears to mean very little, so far.
NOTES
Bloomberg News is still up to its propaganda — repositioning here Royal Dutch Shell’s ‘trying to save the climate’ so that it becomes ‘another misallocation of shareholders’ money’
My whistleblowing back in 2019
I publish this 2019 email below before the UK votes in the election on July 4. I’m running to be an independent MP for the constituency of the cities of London and Westminster.
This is an actual email sent to Bloomberg’s Heather Harris back in 2019. Harris is now executive editor, Europe (Bloomberg website) or “chief content officer” (Harris’s X handle) …take your pick.
Harris, X
I was fired about six months after sending this. At the time I sent it, Harris said my treatment had nothing to do with her. I’ve asked her again today (Tuesday) for comment on what she did after receiving the email.
In court over about four years and counting, Bloomberg pretended my sacking was about my competence and that it wasn’t to do with whistleblowing about the climate.
The managers who fired me pretended not to know about my whistleblowing (when they did)…a stance that I contend is completely ridiculous given this email below and many others. A series of judges in the employment courts simply ignored my evidence repeatedly, mocking me in the process and piling on emotional and financial pain.
Fwd: (Financial Times story) Why staff who make internal complaints fight to be heard
| Mathew Carr (BLOOMBERG/ NEWSROOM:) <m.carr@bloomberg.net> | 3 Dec 2019, 09:35 |  | |
| to me | |||
From: Mathew Carr (BLOOMBERG/ NEWSROOM:) At: 12/03/19 09:20:30
To: Heather Harris (News) (BLOOMBERG/ NEWSROOM: )
Subject: (FT story) Why staff who make internal complaints fight to be heard
Dear Heather,
Thanks for you time yesterday. As you said you would get back to me, I saw this story (also yesterday) by the FT and thought I would share because I feel it somewhat reflects my experience. Remember my aim has been to highlight risks for the company and flag bad management behavior that hurts customer interests.
It’s important that you are personally aware what is taking place, especially given your promotion. Maybe you already are. Here is a little of my perspective.
This below a timeline of events following up to present day. I would be grateful if it’s considered at my disciplinary hearing for balance…and context.
I would show prospective companions and ask them for confidentiality. Probably happy also to amend/make better if it helps the process.
The timeline only covers some of the key events, eg how I raised potential wrongdoing, when and to whom (certainly does not include 100% of all questionable events/discussions with management) and the apparent retaliatory behavior that followed:
2000 – I joined Bloomberg
2003
As I cover gas, power, oil companies and markets in London, I help launch Bloomberg’s coverage of carbon markets, as the EU starts work to implement the world’s biggest such program.
2005
EU emissions market begins. Bloomberg becomes “go to’’ news service for traders in the market. I drove coverage and helped train others including Ewa Krukowska in Brussels, who still writes on the market from there. Covered multiple UN climate talks (which were having very limited success in curbing global emissions, even back then).
December 8, 2015
Broke news on a carbon trading deal between the EU and Brazil AFTER CULTIVATING SOURCES FOR MONTHS, the first sign there’d be a breakthrough at the Paris climate talks between developed and emerging nations. This is even though I wasn’t chosen to cover the talks on the ground. A few days later, deal struck.
Early 2016
I was placed on a performance improvement program, which was later dropped after I appealed.
May 2016
Risk to Bloomberg/its customers?: Downplaying coverage of carbon pricing and downplaying calls to implement carbon policy, which means status quo persists, prolonging use of climate-damaging emissions. Raised as part of a response to a written warning I was given. “Those media companies that understand the wastefulness of spending $200 a ton to cut emissions via offshore wind farms now when today that sum will probably cut 10 tons via a coal-to-gas switch…will become rich,’’ I said, urging for more stories on climate policy. Managers instead downplayed emissions coverage just as the EU carbon price surged in 2017, 2018. (Raised to HR, management in letter, which I can provide)
Jan. 18, 2017
A few days after a conversation with the editor-in-chief John Micklethwait after a TV interview he’d done, I sent a message to him (which I can provide) saying we should be improving our coverage of carbon markets, climate talks and we should be writing more stories about the reasons why there’s not much global progress on climate protection via the UN. I said our behaviour risked making a bad climate situation even worse. He said I needed to convince my managers.
Risk?: In the note to Micklethwait, I argued that Bloomberg was failing to focus on UN climate talks properly, highlighting the tensions in those talks and how they may be overcome and a deal struck. The failure to do may be a wrongdoing because it allowed for a surge in/continued oil, gas and coal use. I called for more reporting on energy policy proposals to cut climate pollution. And followed up with email to Heather Harris (senior newsroom leader), copying in Stuart Wallace (head of commodities and energy globally), Will Kennedy (head of energy and commods in Europe) , Lars Paulsson (then team leader) and Andrew Reierson (editor) after she called for coverage ideas.
Bloomberg News instead focussed to some extent on clean tech. This may make it appear the climate problem is solved when it’s far from solved because there’s very little market incentive to shift away from the status quo. i argued we were in a unique situation to help influence policy and make markets work better by improved reporting — how a better economic structure could protect the climate/environment, meet emission limits…and I cited huge banks who agreed with the need for better policy including carbon pricing…e.g. HSBC. [US oil and gas output both rose at record levels in 2018 for any single country at any time in history. Global emissions are at record levels. Capital continues to be misallocated. So, almost three years later we are only now hiring climate reporters.]
Late 2017
Risk?: Instead of improving coverage of carbon pricing and UN climate talks, Bloomberg News scaled it back, after President Trump said he would exit the Paris climate deal. Any U.S. bias will limit Bloomberg’s ability to boost future revenue in BRIC countries, the firm’s biggest sales opportunity. A daily global carbon story was halted. I objected, raising objections at the time with my then team leader Lars Paulsson, his boss Will Kennedy and his boss Stuart Wallace.
EU carbon coverage was put into a daily power-market story, which still in 2019 often gets fewer readers than the carbon wrap got back in 2017. I was told to write fewer carbon and more natgas stories. In hindsight these management decisions may not look good, especially as EU carbon surged late 2017 and tripled in 2018. This apparent downplaying of the carbon coverage limited the scope of Bloomberg customers being able to take advantage of the price surge. Rather than sending me, Bloomberg sends relatively inexperienced reporters to UN climate talks. We get very few exclusives with senior negotiators. (I’m not criticising those reporters, but our enthusiasm to cover the story properly.)
November 2017
Risk?: big-business support for carbon trading downplayed by Bloomberg News. I got an exclusive interview with a senior executive at RWE AG, Europe’s biggest emitter and Germany’s biggest generator of power from coal. RWE was in favour of Germany using carbon trading as climate solution. The exclusive and interesting quotes were dropped to the bottom of a story …that story took weeks of wrangling with my editors to publish:
I argued — raised to my editors including Lars Paulsson — to play up the RWE comments, but lost the argument.
May 2018
Wrongdoing/risk?: delayed stories, hurting customers’ ability to make money/get their head around trends at pension funds favouring clean tech over fossil fuels. Complained about downplaying news at the UN climate conference, which I was sent to cover — bad/strange story management. Detailed how customers are suffering because of reporting delays. March story on carbon seemed to be delayed as carbon prices rose. Customers/readers miss out on profit. Raised to Will Kennedy, my boss’s boss (emails can be included). Autopsy I sought wasn’t handled in a genuine fashion, I believe. Sometimes it seems like I’ve been repeatedly set up to fail?
December 2018
Wrongdoing/risk?: Potentially anti Brazil bias in a story about the UN climate talks and why they failed again. I raised my concerns about my team leader’s behaviour to my skip manager Will Kennedy (email can be provided). Less experienced reporter sent to cover those climate talks again, showing favortism? Very few exclusive interviews with climate negotiators achieved. Superficial coverage
Early 2019
My management issues me with what I believe to be an unfair performance evaluation for 2018 after my key performance metrics surged during the year to record levels for me. Non-genuine behaviour? Claiming my performance is not adequate while putting my stories on our best read screen (top worldwide) every second day; I broke news every 1.5 days in 2018. Other reporters assigned to follow up on stories I broke, showing favoritism (e.g. Legal & General on oil, Climate Action 100+)
March 13, 2019
Sent letter to EU employee relations head Jignesh Ramji and global head Ken Cooper outlining some concerns about retaliatory behavior during past months/years and seeking help with the office politics (can provide).
March 19, 2019
Meeting with HR officer Priya Vora.
April 3, 2019
HR comes back with recommendations to mend relations with my team leader and move forward. I chose to have mediation initially with my team leader and bureau chief Neil Callanan [now on leave].
June 6, 2019
Meeting with John Fraher – triple skip manager – raised again how the Financial Times was doing better than us on climate coverage (though it too is not always great). Risk?: customers relying on us suffer because they don’t understand market and investment trends as well as FT customers. Capital gets misallocated toward polluting industries.
June 7, 2019
Passed over for a job I wanted and fairly publicly humiliated about it in a group email. HR’s Aaron Canty said it was not handled by my team leader on a best practice basis (but apparently of no consequence?).
June 9, 19, 2019
I filed reports on Bloomberg’s outside whistleblowing website Navex Global outlining how there appeared to be continued retaliatory behaviour against me, possibly because I’ve been urging Bloomberg to improve its climate coverage. I acknowledged I’ve been listened to to some extent. Eg Bloomberg News started including disclaimers where company owner Mike Bloomberg has philanthropic activities that cross over into the news, after I encouraged it. This protects Bloomberg’s reputation for objective news. This reputation is at risk because of perceived and apparent U.S. bias as we seek to expand in BRIC countries, our key expansion opportunity.
On or about June 25, 2019
I was declined whistleblower protection, which I had sought because of the apparent retaliatory behavior, which was getting worse. Bloomberg doesn’t provide it apparently.
About June 26, 2019
redacted
July 5, 2019
Team leader Reed Landberg announces in our open plan office that I should “not be sending stories to wire’’ (which would be a considerable demotion for me). After I complain to HR, Reed later clarifies there is no change to my role. (email exchange can be provided.)
July 9 2019
Another Navex Global report. These included protected disclosures such as that our bad coverage was potentially harming pension fund customers and it needs to be investigated.
July 2019
Risk/disfunction?: Bloomberg News is effectively campaigning for fossil fuels/status quo by focussing coverage in that direction, while people globally/pension funds may suffer potentially long term as the climate deteriorates, perhaps quickly.
[this is now happening]
Still, it’s true that the funds and banks make a lot of money in the short term via fees and higher dividends from the fossil fuel companies — they can then reallocate capital where they see fit. Raised via Navex global ethics hotline.
Early July 2019
A grievance procedure against management begins [I was talked into it] after mediation appeared to fail — and on prodding by a HR leader. This move to start the grievance was driven by HR in my opinion. I just wanted the management behaviour and news judgement to improve and match our company policy and culture, which is to do the right thing.
July 18, 2019
Investigation hearing for grievance…(transcript included)
Leslie Paul (HR) Sam Fazeli – head of Bloomberg Intelligence – conducting the investigation
July 23, 2019
I received a verbal warning for insubordination. HR and team leader Reed Landberg and HR rep Lucy Mills declined to specify the bad behaviour, which was in relation to a complaint about a story that we should publish urgently (our slowness meant the FT scooped us and the warning came after I pointed this out to management – maybe i pushed a little hard on this, but the managers sometimes can’t seem to take even fair criticism). (Email/letter can be provided)
July 30, 2019
I sent examples of bias and bad behaviour by management to Leslie Paul and Sam Fazeli as part of grievance (can be provided)
August 23, 2019
My grievance dismissed (letter can be provided)
August 29, 2019
I appeal (letter can be provided). Appeal to be handled by Chad Thomas and Aaron Canty.
Aug. 30, 2019
Put on a performance-improvement plan by team leader Reed Landberg (letter included). This was announced at a meeting with Reed Landberg with the surprise appearance of Neil Callanan, London bureau chief.
Some of my best stories were cited as justifying the PIP (e.g. Citigroup on shipping emissions, Bank of England stress tests)
Sept. 11, 2019
redacted
Sept. 23, 2019
Meeting with Stuart Wallace to raise questions about how and why I was put on the PIP. Stuart was very evasive, defensive, declined to address issues.
10th Oct, 2019:
Call for disciplinary hearing (less than 24 hours notice) — I have allegedly not met elements of my performance plan (can be provided) Meeting delayed.
Oct. 16, 2019
Send email to Chad and Aaron, more examples. I’m now being removed from bylines, for example. My ideas handed to others.
October 21, 2019
Meeting with John Fraher and other reporters where I highlighted the importance of reporting about the tension between the 1 billion people whose nations have caused the climate crisis, and the six billion remaining people on earth whose climate has been ruined. Fraher said Bloomberg would probably not be focussing on that story, though he said he understood the climate problem was about politicians’ short termism.
Nov. 1 2019
Email to Priya Vora HR outlining more bad behavior of management
November 8, 2019
Appointments for medical help for me to deal with work stress, which I arranged using Bloomberg’s health cover, mysteriously cancelled, delayed and rescheduled without my consent or even consultation. (could be just computer glitch?)
Nov. 25, 2019
“Welcome back to work” meeting: HR rep is about 18 minutes late, even though she set up the meeting. Team leader at least arrived on time but says he’s unclear what the meeting’s about.
Sincerely, Mathew
Mathew Carr — natural gas, energy, climate-markets reporter
3 Queen Victoria St, London
Bloomberg News ph: +44 203 525 3531
You know you want to — follow me on Twitter: @carrzee
https://twitter.com/carrzee
Send news, analysis: energynews@bloomberg.net; euenergy@bloomberg.net
Some stories: http://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ADSMTYaQGsQ/mathew-carr
Why staff who make internal complaints fight to be heard
2019-12-02 11:30:15.80 GMT
By Alicia Clegg
(Financial Times) — “Horrible.” That is how Sam Walker, former chief human
resources officer of the Co-operative Group, describes fighting her former
employer, first through an internal grievance process and then an employment
tribunal, followed by an appeal lodged by the Co-op against the tribunal
ruling, which had found partially in Ms Walker’s favour.
She had claimed that she was sacked for refusing to accept a demotion after
complaining that she was paid less than her male peers. In October an appeal
tribunal upheld one aspect of the Co-op’s appeal, in connection with the equal
pay claim, and rejected another, relating to the tribunal’s finding of direct
discrimination in an end of year appraisal in 2015.
Ms Walker, who intends to appeal the ruling, has already paid a high price for
her tenacity. To pursue her claim, she remortgaged the family home and
exhausted her savings — and herself. Fighting an employer grinds you down.
After a few months, she says, “you’re not sleeping, not eating properly, you
think ‘is it me?’”
Dissatisfaction with how organisations handle complaints is widespread. The
journalist Carrie Gracie writes in Equal, her account of challenging unequal
pay at the BBC, of receiving “10 barely recognisable pages [of notes] littered
with errors, omissions and additions,”, after her grievance hearing. She had
assumed that her evidence would be audio recorded but was told it was not BBC
policy.
Ms Walker, who now works as an equal pay campaigner and coach, talks of a
“toolkit” that employers can dip into to defeat rather than investigate
complaints. She warns that employees who use internal channels to challenge
injustices may discover that their performance is suddenly found lacking and
that the employer may withhold documents helpful to their case.
She wants changes to employment practice to make victimisation of complainants
harder and audio recording of grievances the norm, and supports the Fawcett
Society’s new #Right To Know campaign. Its aim is to oblige employers to give
women who suspect that they are underpaid the right to see salary data on male
comparators.
It is not only unhappy staff who question employers’ good faith in handling
claims of unfair treatment. Asked how he would advise someone contemplating
making an employment complaint, Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, hedges. “If the advice is to
people in general, of course, you should fight the good fight,” he says.
He adds: “If it’s your child you probably want to tell them don’t do
it . . . because you’re really going to get hurt, even if you win.”
When concerns are brushed under the carpet, employers lose the opportunity to
nip problems in the bud, and sacrifice goodwill. Ms Gracie says she felt more
betrayed by the mishandling of her grievance than by discovering that she was
paid less than male peers. “Many people, myself included, are really shocked
when they come face to face with the complaints process inside their
organisation,” she says.
So, can anything be done? Emma Webster, joint chief executive of Yess Law, an
employment law charity, wants to make mediation the first response in
disputes. She says that grievances — the clue is in the name — are polarising
because they focus on what went wrong and take place on the official record.
“Employers find themselves doing everything to not uphold a
grievance . . . because they’re advised not to expose themselves to legal
proceedings.”
Yet mediation can have drawbacks, especially when there are power imbalances.
It puts the onus on those involved to resolve their differences, implying that
both sides may need to change, which, critics say, risks handing bullies a
free pass. By looking forwards, mediation may also deflect attention from
misconduct, allowing the perpetrator to escape sanction, especially if that
individual is close to senior management.
At the root of the problem, are not processes, but rather the willingness of
leaderships to abuse process and a lack of checks that enables this behaviour.
Recent reports in the FT and elsewhere show a repeated pattern of allegations
of HR not responding appropriately to reports of sexual misconduct and
bullying at big companies.
“Even if HR likes to think of itself as a profession, HR works for the
leaders; it isn’t going to do things that the leadership doesn’t want,” Prof
Cappelli says.
Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive at WhistleblowersUK, a not-for-profit
organisation, says that when employees raise concerns, HR is often
sympathetic, though this can change when senior staff get involved.
Citing an email exchange between an HR officer and a whistleblower that the
organisation is assisting, she says: “You can tell from the change of tone
that the HR director has been put under pressure to back off and we see it in
many cases.”
Research by the CIPD, the UK professional body for HR, in 2018, adds to the
picture of a function that feels torn. According to the survey, 28 per cent of
HR personnel perceive a conflict between their professional judgment and what
their organisation expects of them; the same proportion feel “it’s often
necessary to compromise ethical values to succeed in their organisation”.
Though the survey does not go into details, Ms Walker says that most HR
directors know colleagues who have been fired for standing their ground. Such
departures are glossed over with a non-disclosure agreement that protects the
company and allows the departing HR professional to avoid being labelled,
because: “Who wants to hire an HR director that’s going to stand up to them?”
Maggie Brereton launched Eos Deal Advisory in September, after she and her
co-founder left KPMG over concerns at its handling of bullying allegations.
Describing HR as “something of a victim”, she says that the way to empower HR
is for top leadership to say, “these are issues we need to deal with, and mean
it”.
To prevent workplace problems escalating, she suggests offering psychological
support and coaching to both parties. But, she adds, if someone is not open to
change, employers need to ask: “Do I want this person, if they don’t fit with
our culture?”
To limit the ability of employers to abuse their own rules, Yess Law wants
organisations to be required to report the number of complaints of
discrimination made against them by employees, regardless of whether the
internal process found in favour of the employee.
Ms Walker is developing a proposal to put to the Equality and Human Rights
Commission to create a fund to protect HR personnel who suffer retaliation for
refusing to tolerate unethical practice. “It’s not going to stop companies
sacking HR directors but, at least, if they have funding they can fight back,”
she says.
An HR director’s story: ‘Nobody had my back’
Would you break the rules for a bullying boss? That is the choice that one HR
director, who asked not to be named, faced twice at separate companies.
Told by a senior manager at a FTSE 100 business to rig a pay review to favour
his allies, she refused. “After that, he did everything to make my life
absolute hell,” she says. Then, at the first opportunity, he fired her,
claiming that she was underperforming. Warned that the company would use its
resources to fight her all the way if she took legal action, she accepted a
pay-off and left.
Her next employer asked her to manipulate the numbers for a statutory
reporting requirement to make its performance look better. She refused, signed
another non-disclosure agreement and resigned. Twice forced to leave an
employer for following her conscience, she says such incidents “happen left,
right and centre”, and until such times as HR managers are protected against
retaliation the problem will worsen.
“In challenging times, senior HR professionals are expected to have the
company’s back, but when the chips were down nobody had my back,” she says.
Click here to see the story as it appeared on the Financial Times web site.
The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. -0- Dec/02/2019 11:30 GMT
*Added context for clarity on Aug. 20, 2024