Managerial Bullying

[Codebreaker]

Guys, as the newly appointed Moderator for the new MDEC STAFF forum, appointed by POSTMAN (thank you POSTMAN, I am honoured and will strive to ensure the trust you have placed in me is not misplaced) I feel obliged to tell you:

1. That we ALL need to be careful around what we post on here. If we want to remain anonymous then we must ensure we do NOT post details that will identify us.

2. That we all need to be careful around what we say in that we SHOULD NOT name individuals as that will, I can assure you, lead to complications that none of us need.

3. I have communicated with Dr Richard Kimble (by PM on here) that they need to edit their original topic. Some of the post has caused upset and Dr Richard Kimble has been advised of that. You will see that the ‘***’s replace identifying and essentially disrespectful comments.

4. I have decided this course of action as I have been given the responsibility of moderating our forum and do believe I have acted today in the best interests of us all.

5. We all should be proud of ourselves and others on this site. Support that we give to fellow workers is always a positive thing. We need to be mindful that we can go too far. We can put ourselves into a position which we could ultimately find difficult to defend – in particular it will NEVER be a good idea to NAME someone on here.

6. The concept of the Union is that we stand together as one. This gives us power. Collectively we have infinitely more power than standing alone. What we DO NOT need is to jeopardise that in any way.




GOOD LUCK TO US ALL AND HAVE FAITH

[POSTMAN]

Codey,i done a bit of jiggery pokery and made your last post an announcement

[gfgf]

In the words of pop eye - 'I can't stands no more'.

I'm in the unfortunate situation of being on early shift, and I can instantly agree with most of what people say on here. Sometimes I find the only way I can cope with this tosh is to laugh, because if I didn't laugh, I'd probably end up crying over the dire situation we're in. Personally I have too much financial commitment to risk my job, and so if things become too 'heated' with management - the bottom line is I have to put up and shut up. So where does this leave my wondering mind....

Well, this forum gives myself and us all a great prospect to vent anger, and to galvanise our principles without having our jobs forsaken. We just need to keep the faith...and lets face it - we're the good guys, and good always triumphs over evil (aka the management). Those bunch of corrupt liars aren't fit to be minced up in a food blender and fed to pigs. I've heard too many stories from too many trusted sources, along with too many own experiences to make myself feel safe under their influence.

anyway...I'm going bed now...nice early start to the day :@

[BELIAL]

Well, this forum gives myself and us all a great prospect to vent anger, and to galvanise our principles without having our jobs forsaken. We just need to keep the faith...and lets face it - we're the good guys,

Yes indeed ,but it gives us far more than that. For perhaps the first time in modern industrial relations in GB it gives us the opportunity to organise and inform independently of established channels.

There is an opportunity for sharper and more commited minds than mine to exploit this situation for all our benefits

[gfgf]

Well, this forum gives myself and us all a great prospect to vent anger, and to galvanise our principles without having our jobs forsaken. We just need to keep the faith...and lets face it - we're the good guys,

Yes indeed ,but it gives us far more than that. For perhaps the first time in modern industrial relations in GB it gives us the opportunity to organise and inform independently of established channels.

There is an opportunity for sharper and more commited minds than mine to exploit this situation for all our benefits

True...lets just hope enough people do come forward.

[La]

Thankyou Codebreaker for changing the original post. Whilst I sympathise with anyone struggling at work I do think that the original post was offensive and unnecessarily nasty. It doesn't strengthen anyone's argument when they result to name calling or swearing. It's much better to have a reasoned debate without stooping to the level of the playground.

I'm surprised that so many people are under the belief that the management are planning some kind of evil revolution, starting with making keyer's lives hell and presumably ending with them ruling the entire planet?? Managers, I'm sure, are there for the same reason that we're all there - to earn money, to pay for the food in the fridge, the petrol in the car, the mortgage or rent on the house and all the other bothersome things we humans have to pay for. I doubt any of them would be there on Tuesday morning if they won the lottery tonight!

Although this site could be useful, if you really do have a problem with the way that you are being treated at work (either by manager, fellow keyer, cleaner or whoever) then isn't it better to actually speak to someone at work? How many of you I wonder have approached your manager or someone else that could help? I'm sure it's good to vent anger by writing on here but ultimately if you genuinely feel that your manager has treated you badly then you need to follow it up in the appropriate channels, rather than hiding behind a clever pseudonym on the internet.

Obviously I'm not aware of many of the issues that are affecting people so I don't want to belittle them, but sometimes whilst at MDEC it seems that people do take joy from complaining about silly little things - like for example going into a training set. I'm sorry but if I ran a company I'd want to make sure my staff were as well trained as possible too. OK training sets can feel demoralising but it's part and parcel of the job, no? And they can be useful. I consider myself to be quite a good keyer but I learnt a lot last week from the ireland training set. I didn't enjoy it, I like being right and hate being told I'm wrong, even by a computer ;)

I think we need to remember that we get paid a nice sum for a job that is, essentially, sitting on our bums and listening to music. Some months of the year we go into work pretty much knowing that for 2 hours or so that day we will be yapping to our friends or playing on our consoles or reading a book and getting paid for the privilege. (I bet no manager can make such a claim??) We get ample breaks each day, opportunity *most* weeks to raise issues in WTL and a fairly nice, comfortable building to work in. (And we don't have to deal with the public complaining at us all the time! Honestly that would soon drive me mad)

It's not a perfect job, I'm sure some people do get screwed by the system like in most jobs and I'm sure that there are a lot of problems out there that perhaps aren't being dealt with as best they could be, but ultimately I think it's unfair to have the opinion that "Those bunch of corrupt liars aren't fit to be minced up in a food blender and fed to pigs". I urge anyone who feels badly treated to try and get it sorted (but don't just rely on your CWU rept, I reckon from the amount of problems it seems there are that they'd probably be working every hour of the day if no-one did anything for themselves), so you don't end up having worked at a place that you hate and in 5 years realise that you've spent a large chunk of your life brewing with hatred. Life's too short to be so stressed out about your job, right?

La
xXx

[evilc]

hello all
today was easily my worst day wiv the mdec in 2 years, having been treated like a peice of s**t on certain peoples shoe. four of us were taken away for an hour and told to sit in silence and do a training set. how insulting. it seems we are being punished for a dip in performance when, for the previous 6 or so weeks we have been by far the best performing team and no real recognition for it. i have kept myself to myself for some time now but i feel that it is time to stand up and speak up because the way we are being treated is just wrong and unfair. i get the impression that certain managers are only interested in one thing - their bonus - and it seems they will stop at nothing to get it. the real personalities of people are starting to show and it isn't pretty!
i personally have had enough of being treated like a nobody.

Next time if it happens refuse to go to this room as you can do training at your normal work station.

[gfgf]

hello all
today was easily my worst day wiv the mdec in 2 years, having been treated like a peice of s**t on certain peoples shoe. four of us were taken away for an hour and told to sit in silence and do a training set. how insulting. it seems we are being punished for a dip in performance when, for the previous 6 or so weeks we have been by far the best performing team and no real recognition for it. i have kept myself to myself for some time now but i feel that it is time to stand up and speak up because the way we are being treated is just wrong and unfair. i get the impression that certain managers are only interested in one thing - their bonus - and it seems they will stop at nothing to get it. the real personalities of people are starting to show and it isn't pretty!
i personally have had enough of being treated like a nobody.

Next time if it happens refuse to go to this room as you can do training at your normal work station.

I don't think the manager was in a mood to reason - The group that had been moved were specifically told to move to try and avoid any distractions from other keyers whilst doing the training sets. They were also denied being offered half days, when the rest of the shift had the chance. The group were also told it would be an hour a day, but this doubled into being two hours a day. Only one team on earlies were subjected to this, other teams with worse performing keyers just went about their normal business.

[evilc]

hello all
today was easily my worst day wiv the mdec in 2 years, having been treated like a peice of s**t on certain peoples shoe. four of us were taken away for an hour and told to sit in silence and do a training set. how insulting. it seems we are being punished for a dip in performance when, for the previous 6 or so weeks we have been by far the best performing team and no real recognition for it. i have kept myself to myself for some time now but i feel that it is time to stand up and speak up because the way we are being treated is just wrong and unfair. i get the impression that certain managers are only interested in one thing - their bonus - and it seems they will stop at nothing to get it. the real personalities of people are starting to show and it isn't pretty!
i personally have had enough of being treated like a nobody.

Next time if it happens refuse to go to this room as you can do training at your normal work station.

I don't think the manager was in a mood to reason - The group that had been moved were specifically told to move to try and avoid any distractions from other keyers whilst doing the training sets. They were also denied being offered half days, when the rest of the shift had the chance. The group were also told it would be an hour a day, but this doubled into being two hours a day. Only one team on earlies were subjected to this, other teams with worse performing keyers just went about their normal business.

If happens again, just ask for a grievance form.

[Codebreaker]

Sound advice, evilc.






GOOD LUCK TO US ALL AND HAVE FAITH

[Mailbag]

you are not allowed half days if you are under performing, have had a half day the day before or you just come back off a holiday as I understand it.

[evilc]

you are not allowed half days if you are under performing, have had a half day the day before or you just come back off a holiday as I understand it.

Well that is complete BULLSHIT, I suggest you have a chat with codebreaker if that is not a clear grievance case then what is.!!!!!! Also who decides whether you are under performing, if you are hitting your gateway targets then you are not underperforming.

[xxxx]

you are not allowed half days if you are under performing, have had a half day the day before or you just come back off a holiday as I understand it.

Certainly the latter two reasons for not permitting a half day are absolute trash. It's YOUR HOLIDAY, so in theory, you can take it whenever you like.
I know somebody in the past who has had numerous half days in a row and after they've come back from a week or two off on annual leave.

The underperforming thing is tricky, yes, although if you're above your gateway your effectively not underperfoming. However, if you've been underachieving for several weeks, i.e working well below what you, your coach/manager knows you are capable of, and you can't be coached because you keep taking half days, then it's a different matter.
Also though, if you've had an off week and performance has suffered for whatever reason, then there is no reason, in my opinion, why you should be denied a half day etc.

At the end of the day, coaching is there to help people and I have benefitted from it in the past. There seems to be a stigma attached to it that suggests you're a crap keyer, something to be emabrressed about. That's certainly not the aim, but some situations have been handled very poorly indeed to lead to this stigma.

[gfgf]

Well I find that a lot of management and coaches within the MDEC don't understand stats properly, and this counts as an individual and as a team, I find the time frames they judge performance on are too narrow, and if they used the average over a greater period of time it would give a better picture. The sample rate for marking accuracy is too little, and they never try to look for patterns, its just a case of - 'your stats are low this week, I don't care if the rest of the MDEC shares the same decrease in performance, its your fault for not keying properly'

[evilc]

Well I find that a lot of management and coaches within the MDEC don't understand stats properly, and this counts as an individual and as a team, I find the time frames they judge performance on are too narrow, and if they used the average over a greater period of time it would give a better picture. The sample rate for marking accuracy is too little, and they never try to look for patterns, its just a case of - 'your stats are low this week, I don't care if the rest of the MDEC shares the same decrease in performance, its your fault for not keying properly'

The main problem is that as you have said is that some managers/coaches do not understand stats, also as they strive to be the best performing team they use these figures as a stick to hit you with as in the long term it affects their bonus.