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There’s a particularly interesting petition doing the rounds at the moment. I know that in many ways, petitions on anything are what is technically known as a complete waste of time, and it is likely that this one will be, too, but the subject is one that is very close to my heart and because of the power of some employers I am having to be deliberately vague about what I write on here. This petition is called ‘Stop Employers Covering Up Abuse‘. It goes on”
“Ban the misuse of contracts, often known as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), that silence workers from speaking about abuse, harassment or discrimination they face in the workplace. Perpetrators of abuse should not be protected by these agreements and victims should not be gagged.”
Let’s be clear: I have never been in a position whereby I was asked, or told, to sign an NDA to silence me about something. But – and let’s use an entirely fictional scenario, here – there may have been a time when I was told to not mention to someone very senior in an organisation in that a colleague was supplying Class 2 drugs to a customer. My employment was forcibly terminated within days for an entirely separate, and in my view totally made-up like this anecdote, set of affairs. Again, I must be extremely vague but I had no reason to doubt that there were some extremely influential and powerful people lined-up against me. Not quite, “Mind how you go” but there was a hint of a threat within it.
At another employer, the British Red Cross, I faced bullying and abuse from the top down and because of the weight of senior managers and others lined up against me, including their Occupational Health Service who called me “emotionally weak” after a bullying episode, I was totally alone. Again, no NDA but I was silenced and effectively gagged. That, in my experience, is the way of the world, where employees are basically fodder for management, both good and bad.
I had jobs with Asda and Tesco when I retired from the civil service (where, especially in my latter years, managers were generally very good) and you were there to do as you were told. Management by instruction, so not really management at all. I cannot deal in specific numbers here, in terms of how common this is, but anecdotally it seems to me that bosses and workers are as far detached as they have ever been.
I appreciate that managers are required in most walks of life. Indeed, I have worked with many managers who did not have the first clue about the work I did, but knew how to manage staff. That’s a combination of gift and good training but the use of NDAs is essentially an aid to bullying.
More than that, I regard managers and ordinary workers as having equal value in human terms. And if they are able to employ respect to one another, there are only winners. Whether it’s NDAs or simple oppressive management we are talking about two cheeks of the same arse.
It’s the lack of workers’ power I felt the most. At the British Red Cross, that most sainted of charities, I was nothing, other than a punchbag for bullies and over-promoted and massively overpaid managers. They wielded so much power that attack weapons like NDAs were never needed. (By pure coincidence, while this was all going on, I found on a number of occasions that long nails were appearing in my car tyres. I should add at this point that this would not have been authorised, nor was it even known about, by the organisation, nor by the brother of one of the bullying managers.)
I’ve gone around the houses a bit in this blog but I hope you get the general idea. Being kind includes those at the top of the shop being kind to those at the bottom. Those at the bottom need a fairer deal so hopefully this petition will succeed and they will get one.
