I wish I had complained publicly about the firm that summarily demoted me

My very first job was as a typist in a typing pool working for a firm of solicitors who had a contract with an insurance company to process insurance claims.

My job was to type up the claims negotiators’ reports and letters from dictation on audio cassettes. I was interested in the content and would ask questions about why they’d written what they did, etc.

As a result of my enthusiasm, I was offered a promotion from the typing pool to the claims negotiation team after I got back from a short holiday.

However, when I returned to work, I was told the offer had been rescinded and I was back in the typing pool.

I was given no explanation at all of why I had been demoted. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed off. Obviously, I left soon after.

I remembered this old wound when hearing about The Aberdeen Group summarily sacking the Financial Fairness Trust’s chief executive, Mubin Haq, the chair, Sir David Norgrove, and all the independent trustees, without any notice.

The group has appointed 10 new trustees, all of whom are apparently affiliated in some way with The Aberdeen Group.

Apparently, this is allowed in its governing documents, which is in itself indicative of a terrible flaw in charitable law that clearly needs to be re-examined by the regulators.

The Aberdeen Group says it is a “natural evolution” to shift focus from funding research to supporting communities more directly.

We don’t know what the outgoing trustees think, but it’s fair to assume they didn’t agree with this direction of travel.

The fact is that it is the job of the board to make such decisions, and one suspects that the sacking of all the key players, in order to make way for those chosen by the group, is so that they can force their will on the charity.

And, by the way, this is not the first time this has happened to a supposedly independent board of a foundation set up by a company.

In UK charity law, trustees are expected to exercise their powers independently, without subordinating themselves to the will of others or external bodies, including founding bodies.

They are supposed to make their decisions in the best interests of the charity. In principle, it is for them to determine what the future funding priorities are.

Quite apart from the fact that this is appalling governance – how on earth can any board of trustees comply with their legal duty to act independently if a funder has the power to get rid of them all?

I would have serious questions about any new board’s ability to act independently and in the best interests of the charity.

How can they when they are both affiliated with the group and have seen that if they don’t comply with the group’s wishes they can just be got rid of?

I left the firm that summarily demoted me, but didn’t complain publicly. I wish I had.

So, in this instance, I think it is entirely right that the ex-trustees have gone public about this poor behaviour.

Good for them. This is not OK.

This article was originally published on the Third Sector website. Take a look here.