Edinburgh Sucks! | Bullying – The Council culture

Alistar Frater

Bullying – The Council culture

By The Basa ⋅ March 10, 2006 ⋅

Councillor Rev. Ewan Aitken seems in last night’s print version of the Evening News to be coming out against bullying which to us at EdinburghSucks.com, the Community Education department and the Social Work department seems rather strange when we believe that ‘The Hippy Rev’ actually lords over huge amounts of bullying in both of the departments mentioned above in which he has some oversight.

PiltonSucks.com (http://www.piltonsucks.com/) are currently running a series of articles about “The Muirhouse Two” and bullying in the workplace – specifically social work offices -Â and of course there are a huge amount of fear in the Community Education service as we have proven in recent articles about “Rosendale’s Fraudsters” and the whistleblower case where now the whistleblower has had to go on sick leave because of the bullying he was receiving after winning his case against the council where the council were blasted by the Employment Tribunal before being fined Â£5,000 for allowing aÂ Â£400,000 fraud on the citizens of Edinburgh.

A very senior council official has informed EdinburghSucks.com that the budget for ‘gardening leave’ for this year was Â£10,000,000 but the sum has now reached Â£18,000,000 and councillors are frantic to get the people back to work.Â “The bullying situation is worse than in Thatcher’s days and it is citywide.Â It is the single biggest staff problem the Council have” they told us.

An anonymousÂ UNISON shop steward then informed us thatÂ they themself haveÂ a caseload of about 40 workers who are on Gardening Leave for bullying or harassment and they are not alone.Â They estimate that there are about 300 council workers including social workers, community education workers and teachers who are currently off work because of bullying or harassment across the city.

The council have a bullying policy at http://download.edinburgh.gov.uk/bullypolicy.pdfÂ but this doesn’t cover the council’s biggest staff problem which is bullying at work.Â This document covers bullying in schools by children.

Our shop steward told us that at present UNISON have been so swamped that they are almost ignoring the problem.Â Where this is really surprising is that the brand new Unison Secretary George Lee said back in July 1998 at the Unison conference that “I am sick fed up of employers causing members to become ill and then sacking them for it.”Â Maybe it is time that himself and Councillor Rev Aitken sit down around the table and get it sorted.

George Lee should be aware that the Council are now so worried about the budget overspend on ‘gardening leave’ that they have started sending letters instructing Unison members to attend appointments at OHSAS without informing the union representatives but it seems that he is refusing to take phone calls now that he is secretary.Â Â This is against all the rules and the victims are then put into more fear.

What the council are supposed to do when there is an allegation of bullying or harassment is bring in an investigator from outside the council to investigate.Â Currently in Ewan Aitken’s Education and Social Work departments it is the line manager who is carring out the review and a lot of the time if not 100% it is the line manager who is the bully.

So Councillor Aitken, before you go looking for schools to supply in-depth answers on why there are zero reported bullying at some schools perhaps you should put your own house in order and immediately suspend without pay Rosendale and his Fraudsters to show good faith to the hard workers in your department and then be open about the in-house bullying in the Council.Â Stop for a minute looking at budgets and think of the victims and their families living in fear – is this not the christian way?

Again, Freedom of Information Act will come in handy here to get more detailed figures.Â