Dealing with dissenters in the workforce
Should anyone be expected to employ staff bent on undermining the organisation?
It is a question posed at the TUC conference by the Marks & Spencer employee dismissed for leaking pension changes, and by Tory leader David Cameron, who said he’d sack a minister who behaved like David Miliband.
Yet not only is Miliband still in the cabinet despite criticising the prime minister, a large group of MPs retain the Labour whip while undermining Gordon Brown on issues from windfall taxes to petrol duties and 10p tax measures.
Constructive criticism is good, but it must be directed internally, not to the outside world. To bite the hand that feeds yet expect to remain employed is unacceptable.
One wonders how senior Metropolitan Police officials can both publicly censure the commissioner and demand industrial tribunals, yet continue to attend top management meetings. It is understandable why Marks & Spencer feels the employee who told the press of pension plan changes can no longer remain an employee.
As Cameron said of the Labour MPs undermining Brown: “Either back the guy or sack the guy”.
Open conflict is no way to manage an organisation. Neither boardrooms nor management meetings work well if one faction is trying to undo the work of another. German-style works committees comprising unions and other stakeholders act as a brake, not an accelerator.
The House of Commons is a body based on expressing opposing views but each party should resolve its differences before entering the chamber – if only to present a consistent view to the voters.
So why are so many Labour MPs prepared to rock the boat and jeopardise their party’s chance of re-election? Because they have already calculated that even if the party wins the next general election, the swing against Labour will ensure they personally lose their seats.
A large faction of MPs have worked out they are doomed anyway – just as the dissident Tory MPs who undermined John Major’s government before 1997 knew the game was up.
They have nothing to gain from saving the party and potentially something to gain by grandstanding and asserting their independence before their parliamentary careers end.
The dissident MPs are like a workforce that knows it faces redundancy: there is no point the leaders expecting favours from them. A corporation would get the sacking over with and move on: in politics the conflict is allowed to fester.
