Professor's Bullying Behaviour

by Sarah
(Ireland)

I was working for a Professor for a few years, he was and still is a bully. The first thing that he constantly did was to keep me until 12 midnight after starting work in the morning at 9am without pay. In March 2009 he stood at the office door roaring about staying late to get in animals from Dublin Airport, roaring abuse at me constantly and never leaving me alone.

Then later on that week he abused another Prof. saying could you get out of this meeting, you don't know what you are talking about. When it came to May that year at approx 8pm that night he came into the office and took away all my disks, broke into my personal emails and read them, called security from Estates in the Univ. and I was personally brought out of the Univ.

I came into work the next day only to discover that the locks were changed on the office door and unable to get in. After a few days however I managed to get in. In June however he let me go and out of work since.

This man is 65 years of age and previously suspended from Imperial College, wouldn't sign contracts for any of his members of staff, however, he took a temp in saying that my Grade 3 was no longer there and a new position created which all staff knows it is incorrect. He promoted 3 staff, one of them had handed in his notice but HR stepped in and went against their own policies and procedures and kept him on while other staff remain on the shelf.

When I was let go I was given 2 weeks notice, no holiday pay or a word of thanks for all the time that I gave to this Prof. even though he got in 24million grant from the PRTLI4 which mainly was used up by overseas internationals, it did not benefit any Irish as such. What this money did was to bring a lot of infriction to the workplace and why does the HEA allow this go on.

End of the story was that the case went to SIPTU where I will be getting holiday pay, some overtime pay and redundancy pay - even though my job was never made redundant in the first place. A lesson to be learned when you work for this Prof. in a University.