How fighting an employer or becoming a whistleblower can lead to retaliation and undermining tactics

 Alicia Clegg in The FT

Caroline Barlow felt little emotion when she settled with the BBC last May and withdrew her employment tribunal claims over unequal pay and constructive dismissal. Just a crushing tiredness that left her shaky and sick and so disoriented that for a while she stopped driving. 

She now views her reaction as a kind of grieving, for her job and faith in an institution that she had revered. She entered the BBC’s pay review process suspecting that she was paid less than male heads of product doing jobs similar to her own, and received a 25 per cent rise, though with little explanation of how the figure was arrived at. So she used data protection law to view internal documents that indicated that even after the increase she would still be paid less. The assessors argued, without providing evidence, that she had skills she still needed to develop and the men had bigger roles. 

“Publicly the BBC was saying it had introduced a transparent process. Yet, it was made very clear to me that I’d only get salary information on my peers at a final tribunal hearing by court order,” she says. 

Like the journalist Carrie Gracie, who also challenged unequal pay at the BBC, Ms Barlow talks of her sense of entering a no-man’s-land of stonewalling and doublespeak, where evidence that she presented was watered down or selectively reported. She says that a strategic project described as “transforming” in a business case, for which she obtained executive committee sign-off, was trivialised as “a hygiene project” after she questioned her pay. She felt blocked by the slow progress of her grievance — she only received the outcome on her final day of employment − undermined in numerous small ways and made to feel unimportant. She became ill and was diagnosed with depression. 

Lawrence Davies, director of Equal Justice Solicitors, who acted for Ms Barlow, says such experiences are common. Most employers try to quash internal complaints to avoid exposing themselves legally, should the employee sue. Yet while employers uphold only 1 per cent of grievances, he says, 65-70 per cent of complainants who persevere to an employment tribunal ultimately win, though the strain can be immense. 

Kathy Ahern, a retired mental health nurse and academic, studied the psychological toll of challenging an employer after discovering that nurses who reported misconduct had strong beliefs about what it means to be a nurse. When they faced reprisals for putting patients before other loyalties they suffered overwhelming mental distress, not just because of what was done, but because the institutional reality gave the lie to everything that nursing codes of conduct teach. Another study, published in the journal Psychological Reports in 2019, found levels of anxiety and depression among whistleblowers are similar to those of cancer patients. 

Ms Ahern likens retaliatory employers to domestic abusers who psychologically manipulate or “gaslight” a partner to destroy their self-confidence and credibility. Tell-tale patterns, which she documents in a review paper published in the Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing in 2018, run the gamut from maliciously finding fault, to sustained campaigns of petty slights and obstructions, to seeding rumours that the victim is unhinged. 

Tom Mueller, author of Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud, believes that while employers sometimes label whistleblowers as “crazy” simply to tarnish them, this may actually be how they see them. To “more negotiable” colleagues who know when to bend with the wind, they may come across as “unreasonable sticklers”, and end up friendless and questioning their own sanity. 

Margaret Oliver, a former detective with Greater Manchester Police, says that senior officers dismissed her as “unreasonable” and “too emotionally involved” when she voiced concerns about the conduct of two investigations into child sexual exploitation, Operation Augusta (2004-2005) and Operation Span (2010-2012). 

After returning from sick-leave, brought on by stress, she spotted an article in the staff newspaper in which GMP’s then chief constable urged officers to challenge police policies that their gut told them was wrong. She “took the scary step” of contacting him directly. But instead of meeting her, as she had suggested, she says he replied with a “bland email” promising that her concerns would be reviewed and passing her back down the command chain. 

Having got nowhere, she resigned in 2012 and went public with her allegations, prompting the Mayor of Greater Manchester to commission an independent review. In January this year phase one, covering the period to 2005, concluded that Operation Augusta, had, as she always alleged, been closed down prematurely and children at risk of sexual exploitation had been failed. Ms Oliver recently launched the Maggie Oliver Foundation to support abuse survivors, and also whistleblowers who, like her, have nowhere to turn. “I asked myself: ‘Is there something obvious to others that I’m not seeing? Or is what I’m seeing wrong and making me ill?’ I felt isolated,” she says. 

Isolation dogged whistleblower Aaron Westrick throughout a 14-year US legal battle concerning alleged corruption in the body armour industry that concluded, in 2018, with all the defendants ultimately making settlement payments. 

As research director at Second Chance Body Armor (since liquidated), Mr Westrick urged his employer to recall a line of defective bulletproof vests containing Zylon, a material manufactured by Japanese company Toyobo. Instead he says that he was frozen out, told by an HR officer accompanied by his employer’s attorney that he was “crazy,” sacked and maligned. “If there’s one word that describes being a whistleblower, it’s loneliness,” he says. “Even your friends don’t really get it.” 

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of WhistleblowersUK, says the stress of fighting a bad employer is all-consuming. But, however difficult, it is important to continue doing the everyday things you enjoy. Drawing on personal experience, she recommends finding an independent mental health professional to offload on. “Don’t make every conversation with your partner and friends about your concerns, because that only isolates you further, making it likelier that you’ll end up behaving irrationally.” 

From a practical standpoint, the best way for society to support victims of retaliation is to pay their legal fees, says Peter van der Velden, senior researcher at CentERdata, a Dutch research institute, and lead investigator of the study published in Psychological Reports. “What we know from research is that financial problems are a main stressor, few people have money for a lawyer after losing their job.” Something organisations should consider doing, that might strengthen their culture, is to look for opportunities to hire former whistleblowers rather than giving them a wide berth, says Marianna Fotaki, professor of business ethics at the University of Warwick Business School. 

Ms Barlow says she still has “bad days”, though increasingly less so. Finding people who have had similar experiences, she says, is helping her rebuild her shattered sense of self. “It keeps your feet grounded in reality, not the manipulated version of reality that your employer wants you to believe.” 


The Choreography of Retaliation 

When organisations retaliate against employees, they tend to do so through a gradual piling on of pressure that pushes the individual to the point where they mistrust their own judgment, says Kathy Ahern. They become anxious, hypersensitive to threats and easy to cast as “overreacting, or simply disgruntled”. Some warning signs of what she terms a “gaslighting” pattern of retaliation include:

 ▪Reassuring employees that their complaints are being investigated, while repeatedly stalling.

 ▪Using euphemisms that diminish the person’s experience, such as “grey area” or “personality clash” for victimisation. 

▪Finding fault with a highly-regarded employee who makes a complaint. ▪Praising someone for reporting misconduct, while doing nothing to prevent reprisals.

▪ Encouraging an employee who has suffered retaliation to take sick leave or undergo a psychological evaluation, under the guise of offering support.

Why employers ignore abuse complaints

Michael Skapinker in The Financial Times


“We all knew about it! We. All. Knew,” Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, said of the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the film and theatre industries. 

People felt that, as long as it was not happening in their rehearsal rooms or their theatres, they weren’t responsible, she told The Guardian. “I just can’t believe that we’ve all colluded,” she said. 

Allegations of sexual abuse by top executives are rarely a surprise to those who work for or with them. So why does it take a newspaper investigation or a small number of brave individuals to uncover what so many on the inside already knew? 

First, complaining is like leaping off a cliff on your first sky dive. Once done, there is no going back. And the risks of it going wrong are huge. Those who complain are usually, at best, ignored. Otherwise, they are often crushed by the superior force of the organisation’s lawyers and drummed out of the industry. 

In many years of talking to whistleblowers and complainants about corporate abuse, I have not met any who emerged undamaged. The problem with my skydiving analogy is that skydivers have a far higher chance of landing unscathed. 

An allegation of abuse or harassment threatens not just the managers concerned but also the way the organisation sees itself 

And sexual abuse is only one aspect of organisational harassment. There are other ways managers misuse their power, such as systematic bullying and victimisation. 

When people do speak up, organisations usually fail to respond or hit back at the complainants, alleging, for example, that their performance has been poor. 

An allegation of abuse or harassment threatens not just the managers concerned but also the way the organisation sees itself. All enterprises have a purpose, an ethos, what we have come to call a corporate culture. Suggesting that mission is flawed threatens not only the organisation’s leaders, but its employees too. 

We devote most of our waking hours to working for our organisations. If someone suggests that everything we are doing is built on managers’ nefarious behaviour, what does it say about us that we are putting up with it? Those who speak out often find that their fellow workers prefer not to know. 

When those who complain get nowhere, “a subtle complicity evolves among the other employees”, an article in the Academy of Management Executive journal said. That complicity compounds the other employees’ shame at not speaking out, and makes it less likely that they will do so in future. 

Analysing “deaf ear” syndrome, the article, by a group of academics at the University of North Carolina, compares companies that close ranks against complainants to narcissists “who need to maintain a positive self-image and engage in ‘ego-defensive’ behaviour to preserve their self-esteem”. 

If the misbehaviour does come out, the article says, the damage to the organisation is often extensive — in compensation payments, the departure of senior employees and reputational damage. 

Does the recent flood of allegations mean people will be more willing to speak up? 

Well, that Academy of Management article appeared in 1998, nearly 20 years ago. It followed a string of sexual abuse scandals at Mitsubishi, the US Army and the US branch of Astra, the pharmaceuticals company that is now part of AstraZeneca. In the biggest settlement at that time, “Mitsubishi agreed to pay $34m to several hundred women who had alleged unheeded claims of sexual harassment over a period of years”, the article said. 

Yet here we are again, with serious allegations against, among others, Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of the Weinstein Company, and Kevin Spacey, former artistic director of London’s Old Vic theatre. 

Will things change? Will those who suffer abuse be readier to speak up, and are managers more likely to believe them and take action? One can hope so. But organisations’ drive to protect themselves and their own self-image will not go away. 

Real change would require independent third parties that people can report to, and impartial hearings. With trade union membership falling and access to legal representation increasingly out of reach of ordinary people, complaining remains as daunting a first step as ever.

To fix whistleblower, bank moves from verse to worse

ALOK DESHPANDE in The Hindu

  

The HinduEmbarrassed by revelations about its curious dealings with corporate clients, the Bank of Maharashtra has declared war on whistleblowers. File photo

 

Union leader Devidas Tuljapurkar faces victimisation and possible dismissal by the Bank of Maharashtra, as it suspects him of being the whistleblower behind a story in “The Hindu” on July 7, 2012.

For one unfortunate whistleblower, things have gone from verse to worse. Embarrassed by revelations about its curious dealings with corporate clients, the Bank of Maharashtra has declared war on whistleblowers. And since it can’t pinpoint them, the bank has gone after internal critics on novel grounds. It has chargesheeted a Union leader and ex-Director of the BoM for acts “prejudicial to the interests of the Bank.” That is, for publishing 19 years ago, a poem it calls ‘vulgar and obscene,’ in the Union’s in-house magazine, ‘Bulletin.’ That poem is the basis of the Bank’s charge sheet against a worker with an impeccable service record.

In 1984, the Marathi poet Vasant Dattatraya Gurjar wrote a satirical poem titledGandhi Mala Bhetla Hota (Gandhi met me) which shook the literary world with its polemical content. In 2013, Devidas Tuljapurkar, General Secretary of the All-India Bank of Maharashtra Employees Federation, faces victimisation and possible dismissal by the bank, ostensibly because the Bulletin, of which he was editor, carried that poem in 1994!

The real reasons for going after Mr. Tuljapurkar appear to have little to do with poetry and seem far more prosaic. He has been a thorn in the flesh of his management. Both, as an alert employee and, for a while, as Workman Director on the bank’s Board. He has also drawn the RBI’s attention to the BoM’s odd handling of some corporate accounts and advances which, he charges, are being favoured at the expense of BoM’s main depositors — lakhs of small farmers, working people and retired employees. But the BoM leadership has something more against him. They suspect him — with no basis or proof — of being the whistleblower behind a story in The Hindu, July 7, 2012. That story exposed how the bank had granted a Rs. 150-crore loan to a defaulter owing BoM Rs. 40 crore by greatly weakening the terms of the original sanction letter. The defaulter company was a part of the United Breweries (UB) group headed by Vijay Mallya. The expose embarrassed Bank Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Narendra Singh, sparking a whistleblower witch-hunt.

But no whistleblower was found. And after several transfers of senior officers within the bank, the search hit a dead-end. Ironically, it was an unthinking action of the Reserve Bank of India that handed the BoM management a scapegoat: Devidas Tuljapurkar.

Mr. Tuljapurkar told The Hindu, “Last October, I wrote a letter to RBI Governor D. Subba Rao highlighting questionable corporate advances and imprudent banking decisions of BoM at the instance of CMD Narendra Singh.” The letter, written in his capacity as a Union leader, was backed up with facts and documents. Having served as a Director on the Board of BoM from 2004 to 2009, he was very familiar with the rules and procedures.

However, the RBI failed to protect his identity as a whistleblower. In one of those unthinking acts of bureaucracy, the RBI routinely forwarded Mr. Tuljapurkar’s letter to the very BoM management that it exposed, for their comments. The bank had found its scapegoat and Mr. Tuljapurkar’s ordeal began. “Since I had written a letter to RBI, the management assumed that it was also I who had leaked that story about gifting a Rs. 150-crore loan to Mallya’s company. They wanted to corner me, so they started scanning my history,” he says.

And all they could come up with was a poem from 1984. Vasant Gurjar’s poem is a political satire that is scathing about the followers of Mahatma Gandhi who, in the poet’s view, were merely serving their own interests. In 1994, the poem was published in the ‘Bulletin’ the house magazine of the Union. In March 1995, an organisation called the ‘Patit Pavan Sanghatana’ filed a complaint against the Bulletin for publishing the ‘obscene’ and ‘vulgar’ poem. As editor of the Bulletin, Mr. Tuljapurkar was made an accused in the case.

This May 3, 19 years later, the BoM management issued an internal charge sheet against Mr. Tuljapurkar. It accuses him of ‘publishing such an inflammatory, vulgar, obscene and objectionable material in the magazine “Bulletin” meant for bank employees …” And claims that circulating that issue of the Bulletin on the BoM’s premises (in 1994) was “prejudicial to the interests of the Bank.”

Interestingly, the ‘State Performances Scrutiny Board, Government of Maharashtra’, headed by well-known Marathi poet F.M. Shinde, has a very different take on the poem. In January 2011 the Scrutiny Board made it clear that the poem is neither obscene nor vulgar. “What Gandhi had envisioned about Swarajya is nowhere to be seen. The poet has expressed this in satirical form,” Mr. Shinde had said.

Apart from ignoring the Board’s view, the BoM seems to take no notice of the Supreme Court’s order in the case against Mr. Tuljapurkar. “After the FIR in 1995, we approached both the sessions court and the High Court to discharge me from the case. But that was rejected and our appeal is pending in the Supreme Court,” he says. “The apex court, in its order dated July 7, 2010, stayed all proceedings in lower courts in this case and the actual trial has not even started in any court.”

The charge sheet accuses Mr. Tuljapurkar of not disclosing this pending litigation against him while serving as the Workman Director of the bank and for knowingly making ‘false statements’ in the forms of the bank. BoM CMD Narendra Singh took personal interest in the entire matter, says Mr. Tuljapurkar. The CMD placed the 19-year old case before the board meeting in January this year, recommending action against the union leader.

All this sidesteps the truth that Mr. Tuljapurkar’s name was mentioned in the FIR as editor of the Bulletin and not in any ‘personal capacity.’ It also ignores the fact that even charges in the case are yet to be framed. Calls, faxes and emails from The Hindu to Mr. Singh have so far drawn no response.

Meanwhile, an outraged All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA), to which Mr. Tuljapurkar’s union is affiliated, has called for an agitation across the entire BoM on June 17. “We demand immediate withdrawal of the charge sheet slapped against him and thorough investigation of loans sanctioned by the bank to various corporates ever since the present chairman took charge,” CH. Venkatachalam, General Secretary, AIBEA, told The Hindu. He added that the BoM being a public sector bank, every citizen had a right to express concern about its financial health. “We shall fight back any attempt at victimisation.”

If the departmental inquiry against Mr. Tuljapurkar proceeds the way bank management wants, it could result in his dismissal. A whistleblower exposing the questionable actions of a public sector bank could be dismissed for publishing a poem in 1994. He is also a man who, while a director of the bank, transferred all the money he received as sitting charges for Board meetings to the Union’s account via cheque, accepting no monetary benefits as a director.

“I wrote to RBI because I found Mr. Singh’s financial moves unhealthy for the bank’s future. Hence I’m being targeted and victimised. They aim to make an example of me so nobody in future will dare raise his voice. It has to be stopped,” he said.