Tim Fields author of Bully in Sight who was awarded an honary doctorate by the Southampton Institute is under attack and subsequently has had to close his help line. A number of issues are relevant:
1.The relationship between a unions members and the union machinery.
2.The stress levels and bullying at work through out all industries
3.In this specific case the level of bullying in Teaching.
I have found Mr Fields to be kind and sincere man who has worked tireless for others. He is also a creative and innovative writer that is worthy of support. An online petition has been launched
http://www.petitiononline.com/timfield/petition.html.
It would be good if others helped raise this issue in support of Mr Fields.
Patrick
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16.01.2004 13:09
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Tim Field is being sued for libel by Thomas Long, an Oxfordshire County Council Education Department personnel officer, backed by the full support of the National Union of Teachers (NUT). This has resulted in Tim having to make the sad decision to close the UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line at the end of January 2004.
Tim started the advice line 8 years ago to help those suffering from workplace bullying and through it, he has personally dealt with over 8000 enquiries and over 7000 cases of workplace bullying. These calls have helped thousands of people identify and deal with bullying and also involved Tim counselling many targets out of committing suicide. As the libel action is about allegations of NUT failings that were reported to Tim via this Advice Line, the closure is sadly ironic.
Extract from Tim Field's Press Release of 4th January 2004: 'Field believes that the legal action against him is a specious misappropriation of the civil laws of libel with the objective of controlling, manipulating, punishing and silencing a critic of the actions and inactions of paid officers of the National Union of Teachers. On reflection Field says he can see that he wittingly and unwittingly blew the whistle on failings in both Oxfordshire County Council Education Department and of National Union of Teachers paid officers.'
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