Thursday, April 29, 2010

Another Day, Another Lawsuit

Yet another former UK employee has had to resort to legal action in order to address UK's flagrant discrimination.

Jeanne Suchanek is not the first woman fired for having breast cancer at UK or the first employee to be fired for a serious illness, and, unfortunately, she probably won't be the last.

We have heard horror stories like hers from all areas of the university -- supervisors and deans making their own rules, employees forced to lie on evalutions, and more. Of course these things are against the policies of UK but in the everyday real life of far too many UK employees the official policies don't mean a thing.

Our question is why aren't more employees speaking up?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please tell me this isn't so. If it is then it needs to go public, make the newspaper. If it is true everyone should stand up and shout not now,not ever. It could be anyone of us, our wives,children. This really struck a raw nerve with me. How many times must innocent employees suffer in silence, afraid to speak up.

Anonymous said...

Why more employees are not speaking up? - Because there is no organization that would stand on their side, none. And being a lone whistleblower is a horribly taxing business from every angle: psychological, financial, social. I've done it many times, and on every occasion when there was no friendly organization to back me up, it ended badly. But don't trust me - read literature on whistleblowing at UK library and you'll see that united jackals of power steamroll over lone whistleblowers most of the time. Forget about state institutions that are charged with protecting us: they are largely useless and only con you into believing that you'll be supported if you do the right thing. The press is a joke - I am surprised that Jeanne was even written about in HL. And even that she was - so what? Have you noticed the degree of brazenness in Barbara Jones - UK general counsel? Matches the inner attitude of Lee Todd in spades. And they have a legal budget that is virtually unlimited (yes, our taxpayer money at their free and uncontrolled disposal.)

We need a union or something resembling it. And deal with the Governor: he appoints the vast majority of people who constitute the insolent Board of Trustees that allows all of this garbage to happen under their noses. ONLY THEN whistleblowers will have at least a chance of coming out en masse and not being beaten back every time. THEN something will start to change for the better and cancer-stricken employees won't be simply discarded like used c...

Piqued said...

It's not true anonymous. Professor Peak is just making up baseless accusations. He quotes no sources. Just says, "we've heard stories like this" blah blah blah.

Why aren't more speaking up? Gee, maybe because there isn't more to say.

Anonymous said...

What about the election for staff BOT rep. Who is the best choice? What about a rally in Frankfort to show our disgust with the Admin and the Legislature?

Eggless said...

Anonymous, it's not true. The blog post even says 'Why aren't more speaking up?"

Uh, maybe because there aren't more to speak up...

Nice going, Dr. Peek..

Talking About UK said...

from the moderators: Just fyi, Joe Peek did not contribute to this post or comments.

Anonymous said...

Blatant discrimination occurs at UK because the administrators can get away with it and are not accountable to anyone. The Office of Institutional Equity and Equal Opportunity is the unit that is supposed to look into this matter and prevent such incidents. However, the administrators in this office behave as if their job responsibility is to protect the administrators at UK rather than follow the law and enforce equity/equal opportunity at UK.

Employees who have risked their jobs and complained to this unit find that the supposed investigation conducted by this unit is a farce. The unit usually concludes that proper processes were followed by administrators and complaints are dismissed.

Because this unit is so totally ineffective, not independent but biased toward administration, there is no recourse for employees other than to file a law suit. This is usually a long-drawn process that employees tend to avoid.

Unless this office is completely overhauled and made into an independent body (that it should be), discrimination will flourish and equal opportunity will be a pipe-dream at UK.

Anonymous said...

She has every right to go forward this is the beginning of the rest of things to come why are employees afraid to come forward why!! Why should the administration be allowed and the lawyers to do what they want that is where all the problems are at the top and yes it may be their sister, brother, etc. open up people and wake up, maybe a union will help this and further situations.