Three people had suicidal thoughts after bullying by managers says retired Professor
Written by Toby Cray
Retired Professor Peter Armstrong has tweeted that at least three people have had “suicidal thoughts after bullying by managers” at the University of Leicester.
The tweet was posted on 15 April, a day after staff voted to take industrial action in opposition to the planned redundancies.
This comes on the back of Dr Gore resigning over a “toxic work environment”, as the relationship between staff and management looks increasingly strained.
Professor Armstrong continued: “To the best of my knowledge there has been no investigation of this, whilst many who have spoken out against it have been disciplined”
Charlie Smith, an Associate Professor in Management and Organisation at Leicester, replied to this tweet:
“The support for those suffering is nonexistent. There are no return to work conversations after time off, nobody listens, no reasonable adjustments because there are no managers to discuss OH reports (or indeed any who knew how to refer you).”
A University of Leicester spokesperson said:
“We are deeply concerned to hear about these cases, and have reached out directly to the individuals affected to offer support.
“We would encourage anyone affected to speak confidentially to their line manager in the first instance, so that appropriate support can immediately be offered.
“The University of Leicester is an inclusive learning, working and research environment where staff and visitors should be treated with dignity and respect.
“Any reports of behaviour such as bullying is taken extremely seriously and investigated immediately.”
The Leicester UCU twitter account gave an update of their AGM on Wednesdays tweeting: “members overwhelmingly called on @ucu to support greylisting @uniofleicester: a serious sanction.”
Greylisting the university would mean that UCU members would refuse to attend, speak at, or organise conferences, apply for or accept positions or give lectures at the university.
The former vice-chair, Deirdre O’Sullivan, spoke at the AGM about the way the university have handled the redundancies, stating:
“I have seen intimidation of such a crass a nature that it has made international news and I have witnessed colleagues, well respected colleagues simply break from pain, and others just walk away from their careers that they have invested decades of their lives.”
Toby Cray is a second-year journalism student at the University of Leicester. You can find him on Twitter here
Image taken by LSM member Ollie Monk @britwithacamera
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