Sorry for the long delay in updating this page.

Just to let you know I have reached a settlement with the management but I can’t say any more about it as it is confidential.

The past year has been an interesting (and expensive!) experience.  When I put in my proposal for an increase in my fees I wrote a long letter (November 2010) explaining the reasons why I thought I was worth more than I was being paid.  I had expected to have to negotiate with the management and I was prepared to accept a lower rate of remuneration if the management presented a good argument for a lower rate (it never did though).

The first reaction from the management was a pithy verbal statement along the lines of “We’re not going to pay that.”.  And that seemed to be it as far as the negotiation of my new pay rate was concerned.  The management started talking about giving me a new contract and seemed unprepared to discuss the merits and demerits of my proposed new rate.  

Being a reasonable bloke I asked for details of the management’s contract proposals in writing and the management agreed to this.  I had expected this issue to be addressed fairly rapidly and was anticipating a letter in December 2009 - but I received nothing.  It was not until the end of January 2010 that I received a letter outlining the sorts of conditions that the management would want to include in a new contract.  In my view, the conditions were not well thought out and, more importantly, there was absolutely no specific statement of the numeric financial value the management placed on my services.  To my mind, there had been no negotiation about my remuneration and certainly no “agreement” so, at the beginning of February, I issued an invoice for work done in January at my new 2010 rate.

Here we were in February and there was no agreement about my rate or, indeed, any discussion of what  rate might be agreeable for 2010.   The management told me (after the January invoice had been issued) to continue to invoice at 2009 rates until a contract was signed.  Given the sort of contract the management seemed to have in mind it seemed unlikely I could agree to a new contract unless the pay rate was even higher than the one I had set.

Towards the end of February I did have a meeting with the operations director.  He said he could agree to what I considered to be a small increase in my rate but it became clear to me that he had no powers of negotiation and that the offer was of the “take it or leave it” kind.  So at the end of the meeting no new rate had been agreed although I was told a draft of “the new contract” was to be provided soon.

I kept on supporting you out of a sense of loyalty and hoped the draft contract would arrive soon so that things could move forward.  Sadly, the management could not seem to get its act together and it was not until some way into May 2010 that a draft contract finally arrived, nearly six months after the pay issue initially arose!

The draft contract was marked “confidential” so I can’t talk about it in specific terms (although I would love to).  I was not sure why it was “confidential” or who it was confidential to so I did make enquiries but I was not given the courtesy of a reply.

On a positive note, the draft contract did actually have a specific number for my remuneration.  Interestingly, it was one I might have agreed to months before had the management bothered to try to negotiate with me rather than dictate to me.

Generally, though, the conditions in the contract were totally unacceptable to me and I was surprised that the management would try to impose such conditions upon me.  It was my impression that I had served well for over a dozen years without the need for any draconian contractual requirements so why were they needed now?.  I wrote a letter about the draft contract to the management but received no reply addressing the issues I had raised about it.  It was my feeling that there had been a breakdown in trust which did not make me feel good.

At the end of June 2010 the management unilaterally decided to pay my outstanding invoices at the 2009 rate (at this point I had not been paid for services provided since January 2010).  It seemed clear to me that we weren’t going forward so it all started getting “legal”.  To cut a long story short, a settlement agreement was reached in October and the dispute came to an end and that is where we are now.

You might be interested to know that the higher management demanded I remove from my website the page dated 14 July 2010.  At great expense to me my solicitor wrote a letter to the higher management asking what legal objections it had to the web page - No reply was forthcoming.  The word “bullying” came to my mind during this episode.  Of course, this term may be wholly inappropriate, however, without knowing reasons for the demand I cannot decide.

Back in 2007 (work on the new MIS first started January 2007), I remember thinking that my support would soon no longer be required.  I thought “I was working out my notice” and would be gone in a year or two at the most.  I was thinking in terms of “running down” but future events required the opposite approach.  With the expansion of the organisation and the introduction of several new programmes I was worked off my feet.  Support became increasingly complicated, more arduous and time-consuming.  Back in 1997 (when I started providing services), I had not signed up to support a large, complex organisation with hundreds of staff but I kept going because I thought I was needed and, in any case, the new MIS would soon replace me.  As you know this latter expectation was ill-founded.

Now, of course, I provide no support.  I thought I might be disappointed to lose the work but, I find, the opposite is true.  A great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  I no longer get up each day, start the computer and think “how are we going to solve this set of problems then”.  I no longer have to work in the evening to install new versions of the software when no one is (or should be) using it.  I no longer have to work weekends because some bigwig somewhere needs some information “yesterday”.  Most importantly, I no longer feel an intense pressure to “get it absolutely right” because there are dozens of people relying on me to do so.  Now, my life is more my own.  I have got time to address the Guardian cryptic crossword properly, work out at the gym and I might even be able to take a holiday abroad for two weeks without anyone “panicking” about my absence.  My other, far less demanding, clients keep me ticking over.  Life is so much more pleasant now.

I have no idea how you are all getting on up there without me.  There is no reason why PROMIS should not keep going forever, apart from the odd server or MSA error which, of course, I have no control over.  Now that maintenance of the MIS is the responsibility of in-house staff (I presume) I can imagine that you all get a better service.  When I was supporting there was just me, now, presumably, more people can be brought to bear on problems.  It occurs to me that my departure may have focused minds and speeded up the introduction of the new MIS, so there may be at least one positive outcome to this sorry affair.  Good luck with the new MIS.

I won’t be back.

Best wishes to you all.