Stirling University - How they conduct sham grievance and disciplinary procedures

I thought it might be interesting to show an example of how Stirling University conducts its sham grievance and disciplinary processes. Just days before I lodged my grievance against Kathy McCabe, the Principal wrote to all staff to tell us that the university is “strongly committed to equality and diversity”. In my grievance against Kathy McCabe I gave a cast iron example of Kathy's sex discrimination.

"Kathy has applied considerable gender bias when promoting and recruiting staff, as well as generally managing the team. The role of DBA had been a grade 3 role before I was appointed to it, but I occupied the role for two years and remained on grade 2. During that time, the role’s responsibility had increased significantly, and I was fully competent (confirmed by Kathy) and also working a lot of extra hours. I met with Kathy and requested grade 3, and she refused. I said that I’d need to look around because I knew that my skills and experience would easily attract a higher salary elsewhere. She threatened to have me dismissed. Then during the same meeting, she suddenly agreed to award me grade 3. Since then, I have helped recruit and trained two part time DBAs and effectively taken on the responsibility of Senior DBA, but Kathy has not recognised this by changing my job title accordingly, despite my request. While we were compiling the DBA role description for role evaluation, I included duties that I have been carrying out for roughly seven years. My DBA colleague was very happy to have them included, but Kathy told me to remove them.

In contrast, Kathy has created numerous new posts and awarded them to women she knew personally, and in some cases their competence and attitude have been highly questionable. For example, the System Assistants role description states that five years Oracle experience is required, but that is simply not true. A new position was created about five years ago. It was highly questionable if the new position was required at all, as the existing two System Assistants appeared not to have sufficient work. Restrictions were made to who could apply, and the post was awarded to Selina Gibb who had no Oracle experience, and has only very recently begun to receive some Oracle training after I gave her a SQL course."

On the face of it, this is a very simple example to investigate. You compare the job advertisement with the role description. You ask for evidence of Selina's Oracle experience. You then ask Kathy to explain the fraud. You ask her why a woman with no Oracle experience has occupied this role for six years when she says it requires five years Oracle experience. You include your findings in your report.

However, Stirling University does it differently. The grievance process is concluded with a report by Eileen Schofield that makes no mention of my allegation. It states "At the hearing meeting, KM presented her case rationally and succinctly, and referred to specific examples in the submitted documentary evidence to support her allegations and to refute those made by AG."

It goes on to say "I do not believe AG's grievance claim to be vexatious on the grounds that he and others think he genuinely believes the allegations made are true. However, by reasonable normal standards in light of the evidence submitted, I do not believe the allegations can be substantiated. Therefore I do not uphold AG's grievance claim.

And that's basically it. That's what you get. So, for the Employment Tribunal, I asked the university to provide details of how they arrived at a decision for each of my allegations. Their responses are included in the 'fraudulent document', but this allegation does not appear.

I asked the university to disclose the job advertisement to which Selina applied. It confirms that no Oracle experience was required. I also asked them to disclose the role description for this role, but they have refused to provide it, and said that it is personal data relative to Selina. Of course, it's not. It relates to a role, not a person. So I've had to ask the tribunal to order them to disclose the role description which will clearly demonstrate fraud. I also asked them to explain why this allegation wasn't investigated. They said that it was considered under the heading 'Recruitment Issues' in the fraudulent document, but that section makes no reference to this allegation.

The conclusion for that section is "Allegation not upheld ‐ considered that University processes were in the main adhered to ‐ considered that there were pragmatic reasons for slight deviation from standard process which had been discussed and agreed with HR Services.

That, readers, is how to conduct a sham grievance process. This is typical of the way they have handled all of my allegations. University Secretary, Kevin Clarke says he saw no flaws in the process when he dismissed my appeal. I look forward to cross examining Mr Clarke at the Tribunal. From what I hear, I don't think he is looking forward to it.

This was an allegation which demonstrated sex discrimination when, if you remember, the university was "strongly committed to equality". It also demonstrates Kathy's abuse of the role evaluation process. It also shows that the university is failing to comply with their legal obligation to ensure equal pay for work of equal value. This formed part of another protected disclosure I made to Peter Kemp who was Director of IS at the time. When I cross examine him at the tribunal, I will ask him what he did with all the information I gave him. In my protected disclosure to him in May 2008, I said:

"I voiced my concerns to a senior colleague. Apparently all of the other seniors had no doubt from the moment Kathy had presented her proposals that it was a plan to give Suzie a job in ISD. This colleague was also aware of another post, which very likely had been created specifically for Selina Gibb. My colleague went on to say that in Selina's case, strict rules were applied that prevented people who wanted to apply from doing so, and that it had caused upset with staff in other departments. Interestingly, the framework role outline for Selina's role states that 5 years Oracle experience is required. But Selina didn't have any Oracle experience when she got the job, and as far as I am aware, she still doesn't."

The university has objected to me calling Kevin Clarke, Peter Kemp, Christine Hallett and Gerry McCormac for cross examination.

The university has broken the law several times over. I have informed the MP for Stirling, Anne McGuire, who intends to investigate this matter.

Principal and Vice Chancellor, Professor Gerry McCormac says he knows how to get the best out of people. I lodged formal grievances with him against Kathy McCabe, Eileen Schofield and Kevin Clarke. Contrary to the university grievance procedure, and when the doctor had informed the university that he had considerable concerns about my well being, Gerry refused to action my grievances.

Who the fuck told this clown that he knows how to get the best out of people?

Peter Kemp - Lying bully supporter

Peter Kemp, 10 Finlay Rise, Milngavie, Glasgow, G62 6EQ

Peter joined the university around the same time as me in 1997, but up until 2008, he would walk past me in the corridor without saying hello. He wasn't being rude; he just didn't know who I was, even though I held a senior position in his department. It's a pity it didn't stay that way because I found the interactions I had with him to be very frustrating. I could never work out for sure whether he was exceedingly stupid or if he was just pretending to be. Finally, I discovered it was all a pretence, and he's just a liar who, for whatever reason, supports bullies.

One of the things I complained to him about was Kathy McCabe criticising me in relation to matters where it would have been more appropriate to have thanked me. Peter ended up doing exactly the same thing in order to support Kathy and Eileen MacDonald. He also slagged off a well respected colleague who nobody, apart from Kathy, has ever said a bad word against.

When I first submitted a grievance against Kathy, Peter arranged mediaton for us. The mediation was almost completely useless because Kathy simply refused to participate properly. However there was one good thing to come from it; at least in theory. I had raised the matter of Kathy criticising me inappropriately, and I said that the cause of it was Kathy listening to gossip. She had even admitted to doing so when she criticised me about something she claimed she overheard in the corridor from nameless people. At mediation, Kathy agreed that, in future, when anyone complained to her about me, she was to get it in writing, then send it to me and ask for my response, and then hold a meeting with me and the complainant. For most managers, that would be the natural thing to do, but Kathy had to be persuaded by a mediator.

Just three weeks later, Kathy forwarded a complaint to me that she had received from Eileen MacDonald. At last it was confirmed that it had been Eileen who had been filling Kathy's head with nonsense about me. Although I spent huge amounts of time helping Eileen with her work, she had been jealous of me because I had been promoted. I was a man in a team dominated by women, and there was resentment that I was in a higher grade.

I was delighted to receive the complaint. Eileen was claiming that I was a poor teamworker, and that I was confrontational. However, the truth is that these were terms that described Eileen herself. At mediation, I had explained this to Kathy. I had also explained that Eileen had a very weak understanding of technical matters, and that she wasn't interested in improving. Kathy just denied this, claiming that Eileen had strong technical skills. That was either a lie, or it was based on work she thought Eileen had done, but which was actually done by me or someone else.

I replied to Kathy and included lots of evidence that it was Eileen who was the problem. As Database Administrator, I was responsible for database security, and for two years Eileen had been breeching security procedures and encouraging others to do so too. It's a sackable offense in most employers, but rather than report it, I tried to persuade Eileen not to do it. I had tried to find out from her why she was doing it. I had written to her a number of times explaining the correct procedure, and I said that if she felt there was ever a need to step outside the procedures, she should let me know, and I would work out what the problem was. I couldn't possibly have been more helpful, but the only reason she was doing it was to be bloody minded.

On this occasion, she had told one of her employees to breech security procedures and to log on to a database using an account that wasn't her own. I spotted this, and phoned her up to ask her to log off. Her employee agreed to log off, but Eileen told her to ignore me. After ten minutes I saw that she was still logged on, so I disconnected her. I then spent time helping them with the problem they were having, which was of Eileen's own making.

Realising that it was Eileen (Kathy's favourite) who was to blame, Kathy immediately cancelled the meeting. I submitted grievances againt Kathy and Eileen to Peter. Eileen found out and was worried about the grievance. Peter told her not to worry and that she was doing a good job. He completely ignored my grievance, and Mark Toole ignored it too. In fact, Mark criticised me for submitting it.

In her complaint, Eileen had asked for the database security procedures to be changed, and I had confirmed to Kathy that the problem wasn't with the procedures, but that Eileen, allegedly a Senior Programmer, needed to improve her skills. As a manager, Kathy should have tried to find out from Eileen what the real problem was and then spoken to me if she thought it was something I could help with. Instead, Kathy wrote to the entire team instructing us to debate whether or not the procedures should be changed to suit Eileen's preferred way of working. This was simply bullying by undermining me. I wrote to Peter Kemp to complain. To take the heat off Kathy, Peter said that it was he who had instructed Kathy to send that email. He went on to say that he would be asking for a report from the debate. He acknowledged the fact that I had to demonstrate to auditors that the correct security procedures were followed, but added that it was important that people are able to carry out their duties.

This was insulting, not just to me, but to the auditors too. Firstly he was implying that I was so stupid that I didn't know that people needed to be able to carry out their duties. He was also implying that I was so bad at administrating databases that I had set up a procedure that prevented employees from carrying out their duties. I wrote back to him confirming that everybody was indeed able to carry out their duties. It was an absurd situation where the Director of Information Services for a university was considering adding risk to data security for no other reason than to show support for Eileen MacDonald; a bully.

The team had the debate, and thankfully nobody wanted the procedures changed. During the meeting, I was explaining a technical matter when Eileen, who really needed to be listening, repeatedly heckled me with "You're inconsistent! You're inconsistent!" I asked her what was inconsistent, and she said that security was different on the XYZ database. She was referring to a different type of database for which I had no responsibility, and which was the responsibility of Paul, an employee that she managed. You would think that when you make a fool of yourself as often as Eileen, you would learn to keep your mouth shut.

Peter was interviewed as part of the grievance investigation. He gave his full support to Kathy and Eileen. He described me as someone who just doesn't understand that sometimes procedures have to be changed to allow people to carry out their duties. Of course, Peter had already learned from me that everybody could carry out their duties within existing procedures, but he would also have received his report confirming that everybody was able to carry out their duties. I don't think Peter will be happy until students are able to access the databases and amend their own grades.

Karen Stark was aware of all this as she was included in the correspondence. She carefully avoided raising this with Peter during the interview. A good question would have been "Please describe a situation whereby an employee could not carry out their duties within the agreed security procedures." Answer "Well there might be an occasion where a bloody minded woman could decide that it's just not her style, and that she is special and needs to be treated differently from everyone else. Obviously the security of the University of Stirling's data is nowhere near as important as that woman's feelings of superiority."

How stupid of me and the auditors not to have spotted that flaw in the security procedures!

I wonder if Peter ever told his wife, Joan what he really got up to at work.





He describes me as demanding that things are done my own way. Anybody attending meetings in our team would know that I was the one who would rarely even offer advice, because I knew it would be ignored. I was merely trying to ensure that the University's security procedures were followed correctly. That was my job. The person who was out of step with the university and the team by insisting she do things her own way was Eileen MacDonald.

Peter obsessively defends Kathy who obsessively defends Eileen. So the person who was proving to be the biggest risk to security was being put in charge of security; just like putting a lunatic in charge of the asylum. Meanwhile I'm criticised for merely carrying out my job with great patience. Peter says that I don't understand that the job has to be done, but the only person being prevented from doing their job was me.

Peter then claims that he didn't know why I was off sick for five weeks in 2008, despite the fact that I had written a lengthy letter to him explaining it was due to Kathy's behaviour, and when he received it he arranged mediation for me and Kathy.

Then he slags off a well respected colleague, and in stereotypical fashion he slags off people whom he sees as good programmers.