We’ve been under sustained pressure from management side for some time now to restrict our Blogging activities. The worst of which was a visit from a MoD Police Officer, working for our security, who had come to our office to warn us about our activities. The actions breached all Mod and Cabinet Office rules on dealing with such issues. What seems to have caused particular ranker was our article about the agency failing one of it’s key ministerial targets. More specifically EDS failing a key ministerial target with JPA. Now there is no suggestion that we have ever reported inaccurately or incorrectly, if we had we would admit to it and issue retraction. What we’re talking about here is embarrassment, senior managers and no doubt EDS are not too happy to have their failures widely reported. But ministerial targets are in the public domain and certainly not an official secret.Having established that we have every right to produce a blog, management are now trying to get us to password protect it. What they want is for it to only be available to PCS members and not to general public. We have no intention of doing this. The blog is our ‘shop front’ and it is hoped promotes PCS (encouraging new members) and might make people think twice about privatisation. The wider implication seems to be that articles like the Key Targets article are making the agency look bad. Preposterous of course. Imagine for a minute that I’m in Next with my mate Billy Bunter, Billy tries on a ludicrously small T-shirt flounces out of the changing rooms and asks me if the T-Shirt makes him look fat. ‘No Billy, it doesn’t, it’s your fat that make you look fat.’
Lastly we come to the issue of management style. In years gone by Veterans Agency had a good relationship with TUS, there was an atmosphere where consultation and negotiation was normal. Staff satisfaction was high, client satisfaction was high, targets were achieved and the agency was generally respected by the ex-service associations. Post takeover there is not one Veterans Agency manager on the Agency Management Board, and just about every positive aspect has been turned around completely with the added bonus of a doubling of the sickness figures. We are now working in an (in)effective autocracy where negotiation and consultation is treated with contempt; where one man says ‘jump’ and expects us to all say ‘how high’. But this is not the military and there are processes to go through, checks and balances, processes that are being ignored. Just look at the ‘Close Innsworth’ fiasco. My point here is that if this is the way you set out your stall don’t expect those of us who care to come scraping round your skirts for titbits whilst promising to keep our mouths shut.
