Tuesday, 4 October 2022 – Why Do Managers Do It?
“Rebekah Vardy will have to pay up to £1.5m to Coleen
Rooney in legal fees after losing yet another stage in the ‘Wagatha Christie’
libel trial” the Guardian reported today.
This amounts to 90% of court costs which is a higher proportion than
usual because the judge imposed punitive charges because Vardy “deliberately”
destroyed evidence. Her agent, whom, in
the trial Vardy blamed for leaking personal messages from Rooney on a WAGs
WhatsApp chat group, and therefore Rooney was libelous in publicly blaming her
for it, threw the mobile phone with the leaked messages on it into the North
Sea. She dropped it over the side of a
boat, she claimed, and was too unwell to then attend the trial to be
cross-examined about it. And, coincidently,
Vardy claimed, Vardy accidently destroyed these messages when she was trying to
save them.
They were such childish excuses. And this, in the context of bringing such an expensive claim to a high court. I am sure public opinion was that this was an outrageous claim and, certainly, the judge did too. So she slapped her with the costs of Rooney having been made to try to recover that evidence.
The question most people following this story must be asking is, why did Vardy do it? And that is what has made this story so intriguing. It was puerile but it was also important because one of them had to be wrong. They were both so strident about their positions. There was no room for compromise; no party was going to back down. Their lawyers, despite standing to earn a lot of money (and possibly notoriety) out of this case, begged their clients to back down, discuss it between parties and come to some understanding, and preferably settle out of court. But they wouldn’t. And didn’t. They both seemed so sure. Rational Rooney had conducted a wily sting operation that entertained Sun readers and seemed to convince all that it could have only been from Vardy’s phone on the chat group from which the details were leaked. It was very persuasive.
But Vardy was appalled at the idea that she could be accused. I mean, it’s not that big a deal, really. The only reason someone could be that adamant about such a small crime (she leaked to the tabloids, for example, the story that Rooney’s cellar had flooded), why would she be lying? We had to find out who was right. Why would Vardy risk what turned out to be over £3m in legal costs plus her own sheer public humiliation of being shown to be so self-entitled and a ridiculously bad liar in such a formal setting as the High Court if she was innocent? But she wasn’t.
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. But, more importantly, once she had, I don’t understand why she then let it escalate beyond all sense until it destroyed her, despite the frantic advice from her lawyers. I understand why Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are doing it. Since Brexit broke the taboo that the UK Government must form a relationship between economic policy and reality, they come out with any shit they like. Divorcing our geographically-close trading parties, the most important trading bloc in the world, can lead to economic growth. The British Government can have political sovereignty over the markets which cannot dictate their fiscal policy. They don’t have to consult parliament on key economic policy or even their own cabinet. They are king and queen of their realm. Despite frantic advice from the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, the Office for Budget Responsibility, civil servants in the Treasury Department, other members of her Government, and Rishi Sunak, Truss and Kwarteng, zealous converts to the fantastical benefits of Brexit, will plough on until it destroys them. In the meantime, they live in a bubble that reality cannot penetrate. Until it does. And in what will be a comically fast time for a new Prime Minister and Chancellor to both be sacked.
Unlike with Vardy, I understand why Truss and Kwarteng are
cleaving to their fantasy because 52% of the
voting public did. I don’t understand why my boss is. He created a new team structure. I don’t know why. The service just went through a restructure to
which I was employed in one of the new jobs.
That was in January 2021. There
were other new jobs and new people. Did
he think that very recent restructure was so disastrous that the whole team had
to be upended so disruptively once again so soon?
I don’t think he did because, in the end, he didn’t really change much. I am doing the same job as I was back in February before anyone thought of doing a restructure. The only difference is, I now have a written contract of employment. Our Strategy Officer has exactly the same job as he had before except he is now being paid the salary he was first promised when he started working for the council later in 2021. The Employment Advice Team (“WorkZone”) never even got restructured in the end, they just got a one paygrade increase each. A new job has been created, Head of a new Strategy to whom the Strategy Officer will now report. But you don’t need to re-structure the whole service to create one new post and recruit to it. There has been a vacancy for a WorkZone Team Leader for a year now and this job remains. And remains vacant after a year simply because my boss can’t work out how to do recruitment, not because of any pending restructure. My boss is still the Head of Employment & Skills, but his responsibilities have only changed insomuch as he has less now there is a separate Strategy Team. So why did he impose a painful and uncertain restructure on his team dragging it out for months before sacking everyone, creating that anguish and uncertainty for no reason, and then interviewing me and the Strategy Officer for our own jobs and reinstating all the employment advisers as if nothing had happened?
Well I have a permanent contract now and restructures are a bit like Tory votes-of-no-confidence in their leaders; once you’ve had one and re-employed the prime minister whom you just said can’t do his or her job, you cannot then have another one for at least a year. So I am secure in my job for now and this is a great opportunity to confront him.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him towards the end of our one-to-one meeting today. Rhubarbrhubarbrhubarb he mumbled, something about restructured roles and new jobs, not clearly enough, that is, clear in his diction despite otherwise usually being a clear speaker, for me to make out.
“You eliminated all employment rights we should have by sacking us all for no reason and with no due process. You didn’t consult us on the redundancy process which you are legally obliged to do because you didn’t answer my question, the only question, in our formal redundancy consultation meeting. You have completely disconnected firing and promoting staff from any application of us doing our job well or poorly. You have disrupted the team and put a pause on any real work being done while you restructured the team and while we waited to see whether we had a job or not and, if so, what it will be. And after all of it, nothing has changed. You employ me in your Employment & Skills Team to tell employers to behave better towards their staff; our residents, but the council, the second biggest employer in our borough behind the NHS, doesn’t even afford the legally-binding employment right of not arbitrarily sacking us every two years for no reason actually relating to the council no longer wanting an employment and skills service but, rather, on your caprice. What is it you have now employed me to do if not that? And, if it is that, we need to start with the council.”
“It’s not illegal”, he replied, “because you can’t take us to a tribunal because you still have a job. And we’ve run out of time and I have to go to another meeting. We’ll pick this up again another time.”
He is right of course. Although, just because employment tribunals do not work like that, does not mean that pretending to do a restructure to sack everyone arbitrarily and not consulting us isn’t illegal. After his shenanigans, he still has the same players but has lost the proverbial dressing room and, if his continued employment as a Head of Service was in any way linked to delivering a good service to residents, this would destroy him. But, despite my challenging him, I still don’t know why he started the restructure in the first place. Perhaps he’ll die.
Comments
Post a Comment