Can anyone explain why Sharon Shoesmith and two of her colleagues at Haringey Council have been suspended on full pay? We were led to believe yesterday that they had been sacked.
Surely if she was sacked, she wouldn't have the brass neck to sue, would she? Sorry, as I was typing that I realised what the answer would be. The woman has no shame.
22 comments:
If Shoesmith can sue for wrongful dismissal or claim compensation of any sort, the question is - who the hell draws up these employment contracts? Or passed employment laws that make it impossible to fire anyone without compensation even if they are found as incompetent as she appears to have been?
Kafka would have been speechless with admiration at the way members of the modern Castle look after their own.
Iain, tis the law.
You cannot suspend someone on no pay, only on full pay.
There will now need to be a disciplinary hearing, on the issues raised in the report and once that has been concluded, they can be terminated. That could mean gross misconduct which can be made without notice.
However, a question for you, and your readers is the fact that civil servants now have a culture of expectancy, which is fed from the top where improper and rubbish conduct should mean a sacking, it means wait around for a handout.
See how the politicans get the extra cash for losing office, and what the top tier civil servants get when they lose their job. What kind of culture is being bred for the mid tier, why should they not feast at the same table?
The BIGGEST question for me is why Sharon Shoesmith got the job, or rather why they created a twin role of education and social services care. A hiding to nothing, made by Gov. edict to all councils.
Shoesmith may lack a moral compass, but why in this day and age would any person resign rather than get a payoff when she will never be able to get a job in her professional field again.
It is not like Margaret Hodge she can preside over a scandal and reinvent herself as an MP and Minister is it?
This is not a post defending her, but explaining the modern ways of working we have got used to under New Labour.
I suppose the one 'defence' you could have for Ms Shoesmith is that she will need all the money she can get from her current employers as due to her sheer incompetence and arrogance she's unlikely to find any future employment.
It is also possible that she thinks she has done nothing wrong.
Remember the letter of support from other head teachers in the area.
Its good to see people being help to account from vastly high paid public sector jobs with their fantastic gold plated pensions which 99% of your readers can only dream of. ( Hello Sir I Blair ).
But not enough attention is yet being focused on the systems underlying the failure that is so evident once you perform a review knowing what your looking for ( giving Ed Balls his devastating report ), but gets a 3 star rating a few weeks earlier.
As i pointed out on my blog this very morning... officers and men!
I want them ALL sacked, as per
http://therantingkingpenguin.blogspot.com/2008/11/name-names-who-failed-peter-connolly.html
As for suing for "unfair dismissal" it would be a farcical court case. How can it be an unfair dismissal for complete incompetence? Still more dosh more m'learned friends.
The Penguin
Balls lacks the, erm, balls to sack her properly.
Like all employees, Ms Shoesmith has the right to a full enquiry and not to be ousted as a result of a press campaign.
Shoesmith may well bear some responsibility, but so long as she has not been grossly negligent, reckless or malevolent she should be entitled to a fair hearing and due consideration of her case.
If she was out of her depth then the people who employed her should take some responsibility as well.
As for suing for "unfair dismissal" it would be a farcical court case. How can it be an unfair dismissal for complete incompetence?
UD refers to the process as much as the rightness of the decision.
When I was in business, and after the normal straightforward warnings being given we always sacked people who did not actively contribute in a team context to the success of the company. Most of these people took us to the industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal. Our defence was always based on the contribution made and we never lost and no compensation was ever paid.
Typical of this dysfunctional authority that it lacks the backbone to terminate the employment of the offenders for serious and gross misconduct in case it goes to tribunal.
Since they have no real conviction, you can hardly expect them to have the courage to back it.
Nulab all over and through and through...
Well said Alex. She is entitled to a fair hearing, and to the protection afforded by employment law.
Saying that doesn't conflict with my belief that if she had a shred of honour, or decency, or humanity, she would have apologised and resigned, whatever the financial cost to herself.
PS No Machiavelli, Balls lacks the legal power to sack her properly. The politics of it are so clearcut that even a dickhead like Balls would have done the job properly if he could have.
I was brought up to believe that if you messed up you fessed up.
This woman Shoesmith clearly falls into the camp of those who stand by the code of I have rights and no responsibility.
I don't care what her legal rights are. If she and the others had a shred of honour they would have tendered their resignations immediately.
Under Nu Labour the concept of people accepting responsibility for their actions seems to have disappeared, which probably explains the silly signs in public loos warning that hot water burns!!
We can see the same approach in McWastes' solution to the economic meltdown. Don't worry folks: I'm going to flood the economy with borrowed money, tell those nasty banks what to do, blame the Americans, say the Tories are unpatriotic, rack up a level of national debt which will savage the pound, and encourage an already indebted public to go on a shopping spree. It's all about rights you see. How about a bit of responsibility McWaste. You have trashed the economy but just can't accept the blame.
Time for an election.
@ Half the Story:
"How can it be an unfair dismissal for complete incompetence?"
You are obviously not an employer, or you would realise that has nothing to do with it. One cannot in Brown's Britain sack *anyone* in an established job without following an elaborate disciplinary procedure involving notices and appeals, failure to comply with the regulations is now *automatically* deemed unfair.
Out of her depth on £1000,000 per year? What depth would that be then?
@ Guy
I was quoting a person above me in the comments.
I know what I am talking about in terms of employment law, see my first post in the thread......
I work in HR so do this for a living.......
specifically because at the moment she has been removed from post by Ed Balls, not the authority. He can't sack her so she has to be suspended and I think she has to get paid for that period. It may be that in the coming days she is booted out by the council as well although they will have procedures to follow in terms of poor performance.
And frankly I find it quite heartening that someone can't just be sacked in the middle of a media frenzy. That way mistakes lie. And big compensation payments.
Gross incompetence should be grounds for summary dismissal in any employment contract. But employers often settle claims, however unmeritorious, because they don't like a lot of stuff coming out in evidence.
Disgracefully, with taxpayers' money, they often pay a little bit extra for a confidentiality clause in the agreed settlement; a practice which, in my view, should be outlawed.
I think it's sad you've joined in the hate campaign against this woman. Shoesmith had to work to policy, not hers, the council's. Successive govts including Tory ones have said you're not allowed to touch a child as a professional. So a doctor can't examine a child unless the parent is holding that child, a teacher can't touch a child to restrain it, and a social worker can't touch a child to see if chocolate on his face is covering up bruises or scars. She can only be sacked without pay if she wasn't following policy. All this palaver can be traced to the Children's Act passed by your good party.
The true villains in this case, the child's parents - both his murderous mum, her evil partner and his brother, and his absent dad - will get new identities and get on with their lives, while this woman will never get a new job and her face is plastered all over the place.
Instead of railing against individual social workers who have to deal with broken Britain, rail against the decadence of our establishment since 1967 that led to this tragedy happening in the 1st place.
African Mum: you can't blame the childrens act for all this stupidity. No government has said that you can't touch children, it's the teachers unions etc.that have done that.
It was reported about 2 weeks ago that the Musicians Unions have directed their members not to touch the children they are teaching to play musical instruments!
These stupid guidelines are not laid down by governments.
The legal position is that:
1. An employee whose contract allow suspension without pay can be suspended without pay for a short period pending investigation. But it is most unlikely a local authority would have negotiated payless suspension with the trade unions.
2. Even if the evidence of gross misconduct is strong, a proper procedure must be followed if the dismissal is not to be unfair. This is a law that the Conservatives introduced, and it is not a bad law. It was meant to reduce wildcat strikes and it succeeded.
It is perfectly possible for employers to act quickly and effectively to deal with serious staff problems under modern employment law (although that law is flawed, in my opinion, in various ways). The cost of dealing with those problems can usually be minimised. The reasons why that does not happen often enough are knee-jerk management reactions and sub-optimtal HR and legal advice.
I saw through Ball's statement immediately. The words he used are key. Disingenuous sewer he is.
Shoesmith (Cobbler) should go. If the contract means she cannot be removed, we need to overturn that contract (you can if the contract is basically unfair, and this one would then be so).
ALL, and I mean ALL other Public Sector and QANGOcracy contracts need to be revised and purged as necessary.
There is far too much of this.
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