Ten years ago today, I was one of the 600 odd people who left Network Rail under project Violet. This supposed redundancy was, in fact, little more than payback time for those of us who had dared to rock the boat. Ostensibly, those of us who went were “poor performers” were the ones who found we couldn’t log into our emails that morning ten years ago today. The method used was subjective and hastily put together, yet despite that, the “poor performance” lie has hung around us since then. We are barred from ever returning because of this, yet the vile piece of shit, Iain Coucher who conceived this nasty little exercise insisted that there would be no black mark and that we left without a stain on our records. He, meanwhile, bought an island from the proceeds of his time with the organisation.
For me, the years since have seen mixed fortunes. I worked with a small agency that had a contract with Network Rail at the time carrying out NVQ assessment and training activities. The proprietor of this company knew me and my work and was fully aware that my dismissal had nothing to do with poor performance (not least because those who managed me had no understanding of the work I was doing anyway. That was why I was employed in the role – I was an occupational expert).
That work dried up and I moved into auditing and eventually track safety training. Then followed the moving to France and back again with the collapse that all that involved.
Currently, I’m working away from home rather a lot and have been full-time on that five days a week with motorcycle training on Saturdays. Things look like quieting down a bit come December. I could do with a break, frankly.
I’ve met and worked with others who went through Project Violet. There is a sense of bitterness – both within and without the organisation. It was badly implemented and based upon not performance but on a subjective measure – the Network Rail “behaviours” as assessed by each manager. As there is no measurable and objective standard for this pseudopsychobabble HR speak bollocks (even if the HR types try to claim that there is – there ain’t), the poor performance claim was nonsense. Not least given that I achieved all of my objectives and always performed well in my reviews. If I was under performing, so was my line manager and the one before him and the one before him who carried out those reviews and didn’t raise the matter. No, I managed to upset someone and I know full well who he was. That was why I went. It was why one of my colleagues went as well.
It was not Network Rail’s finest hour. Yet already a decade has passed. It seems so close yet so far.
Coucher got away clean, didn’t he?
Yet I always heard that he was an arrogant, lying bully.
Were there not several cases, that were settled out of court, presumably with gagging clauses?
Coucher was precisely that. There are no words that adequately describe how much I despise that man. Project Violet was unfair dismissal, but the payments were the same that we would have got if we went to court, so yes, we were effectively gagged.
Being in the rail industry myself, I had heard such comments regarding Coucher myself. It always seems that utter failure, when at the highest level, is better rewarded than performing well.
Maybe it’s because they know too much about the machinations of HM Gov’t & Whitehall, and are being bribed to keep their mouths shut.
I often hear it said that “ABC” is a good company to work for, whereas “XYZ” are bastards. In my view, this is rarely accurate as such – most people’s view of their company is based upon their experiences with their own line managers, and people being people, some are excellent, some are ‘jobsworths’, some are downright eveil and a few are utterly incompetent. Unfortunately the higher up the chain the bad ones are, the more their malign influence filters down.
I’m fortunate in that my employers have proved over the last six years, to be exceptionally good.
What wound me up, what really, really wound me up was the libel – that we were poor performers. This simply wasn’t true. we weren’t “yes” men, which was a whole different thing. Yet Coucher was prepared to put a stain on our reputations in order to enhance his own.