The Takeover Thread - Recon Group - NOW WITH NEW POLL

[AV89]

Found this on another Villa site.  Not sure how reliable, but a bit worrying if true...

A disgruntled member of staff sent me this. Vital Villa is an open site for all views so we are quite happy to publish it. I guess the only bit of mitigation MIGHT (I don`t know) is that we were between owners, CEO`s and all that? They've not had time as yet to sit down with many of the staff and sort these sorts of issues out.

Still not a great start to the season when fans went home after a pretty poor pre-season friendly and staff are already upset.

The Villa insider said:

The grass isn`t always greener!

For those of us who thought that the grass under the Dr Tony X regime might prove to be greener then we might just be in for a huge surprise after witnessing what we did on Saturday morning.

Having received phone calls around a month ago asking without ambiguity would we be available to work the friendly match against Middlesbrough and the staff confirming affirmatively, many colleagues duly reported for duty at the designated times of 10.30 or 11am on Saturday.

After being told to go straight to an 11am briefing that started late and lasted about 45 minutes (the content of which was almost completely irrelevant) at least to many of the staff who have been employed by Villa for years some in excess of 30 and more, many of the staff were simply told to go home.

Some of the staff affected had cut short holidays or made special journeys to attend the match and were rightly angry and demanding answers.

The Designated Premises Supervisor (DPS) was asked who was responsible for this decision and came out with a pack of lies by saying we had been asked to attend a relaunch briefing and not attend work (this is a lie and can be proven by the official email sent by Aston Villa). At this point the DPS was asked to get the new head of hospitality to come and speak to the staff and he refused to do so and simply came back saying that everyone would be paid for 2 hours.

Many of the staff had travelled long distances to be in attendance so this insult wouldn`t even cover their travel expenses let alone the time they had spent in getting to Villa Park and the hanging around caused by the inefficiencies of the new Villa regime. Additionally, some of the staff sent home were minimum wage employees on around £5 per hour so for them it was even more of an insult than it was for the staff on a higher rate of pay. A lot more could easily be said on this matter with regards to the presenters at the briefing, the inability of them to get fundamentals correct although that won`t be dwelled on as the important point here is that the club make an official statement to staff on what will be done to compensate those affected by the incompetent performance of the management setup at Villa Park.

In finalising, certain staff are already in the process of contacting acas to seek advice on whether employment law has been broken so Aston Villa won`t have heard the last of this.

*********

The email... names removed:

From: @avfc.co.uk>
Subject: Pre season friendly 30th July
Date: 26 July 2016

Hi

Can you please check in at 11am on Saturday 30th July for the pre-season match Aston Villa -v- Middlesbrough.

Kindest Regards

Aston Villa Football Club
Aston Villa Hospitality and Events Department
Villa Park, Birmingham, B6 6HE
www.avfc.co.uk

*********

No mention of this just being for a briefing and the Villa insider told me that everyone also had a phone call asking "are you available to work for the Middlesbrough friendly on 30th July'

*********

As an addition:

The presentation we had to endure was in 3 parts.

1. Introduction from the DPS where we learned about the new kiosk offering and that they`ve rebranded all the kiosks and spent £22,000 on a new uniform that makes those that have to wear it looked like they work in a kebab shop

2. A health and safety brief (one that we`ve seen a hundred times) from the health and safety officer and he seemingly didn`t know what a dust pan and brush was.

3. A security brief from the head of security who couldn`t work a powerpoint presentation and told us nothing either.

To top it off, they couldn`t even spell sauce correctly and the presentation contained other mistakes.

[Ads]

Back to us have we actually got any money to spend of our own?  This Ross McCormack bid is being labelled as us having funds freed up from the Gana and Clark sales.

And the other £12-13 million we spent...?

[Ads]

I tend to moan about my bi-weekly managers meetings with my fellow middle management. Not so keen on being a Jeff Wigand, especially as it's all a bit dull compared to tobacco passing the blood brain barrier intact.

[Nastylee]

Job thing - load of bollocks. If they don't like it then I'm sure they can work elsewhere. 

[The Laughing Policeman]

Three things from AV89's post make me suspicious. 1.The club is paying the minimum wage of "around £5 an hour" if that bit is true then the club can expect a lawsuit from the government pretty soon.
2.An official email from your employer that begins "Hi" seems very informal to me.
3." In finalising, certain staff are already in the process of contacting acas to seek advice on whether employment law has been broken so Aston Villa won`t have heard the last of this."  So being asked to attend a meeting that you found useless is a breach of employment law?
In my humble opinion your honour I think it's a load of bollocks.

[kippaxvilla2]

Found this on another Villa site.  Not sure how reliable, but a bit worrying if true...

A disgruntled member of staff sent me this. Vital Villa is an open site for all views so we are quite happy to publish it. I guess the only bit of mitigation MIGHT (I don`t know) is that we were between owners, CEO`s and all that? They've not had time as yet to sit down with many of the staff and sort these sorts of issues out.

Still not a great start to the season when fans went home after a pretty poor pre-season friendly and staff are already upset.

The Villa insider said:

The grass isn`t always greener!

For those of us who thought that the grass under the Dr Tony X regime might prove to be greener then we might just be in for a huge surprise after witnessing what we did on Saturday morning.

Having received phone calls around a month ago asking without ambiguity would we be available to work the friendly match against Middlesbrough and the staff confirming affirmatively, many colleagues duly reported for duty at the designated times of 10.30 or 11am on Saturday.

After being told to go straight to an 11am briefing that started late and lasted about 45 minutes (the content of which was almost completely irrelevant) at least to many of the staff who have been employed by Villa for years some in excess of 30 and more, many of the staff were simply told to go home.

Some of the staff affected had cut short holidays or made special journeys to attend the match and were rightly angry and demanding answers.

The Designated Premises Supervisor (DPS) was asked who was responsible for this decision and came out with a pack of lies by saying we had been asked to attend a relaunch briefing and not attend work (this is a lie and can be proven by the official email sent by Aston Villa). At this point the DPS was asked to get the new head of hospitality to come and speak to the staff and he refused to do so and simply came back saying that everyone would be paid for 2 hours.

Many of the staff had travelled long distances to be in attendance so this insult wouldn`t even cover their travel expenses let alone the time they had spent in getting to Villa Park and the hanging around caused by the inefficiencies of the new Villa regime. Additionally, some of the staff sent home were minimum wage employees on around £5 per hour so for them it was even more of an insult than it was for the staff on a higher rate of pay. A lot more could easily be said on this matter with regards to the presenters at the briefing, the inability of them to get fundamentals correct although that won`t be dwelled on as the important point here is that the club make an official statement to staff on what will be done to compensate those affected by the incompetent performance of the management setup at Villa Park.

In finalising, certain staff are already in the process of contacting acas to seek advice on whether employment law has been broken so Aston Villa won`t have heard the last of this.

*********

The email... names removed:

From: @avfc.co.uk>
Subject: Pre season friendly 30th July
Date: 26 July 2016

Hi

Can you please check in at 11am on Saturday 30th July for the pre-season match Aston Villa -v- Middlesbrough.

Kindest Regards

Aston Villa Football Club
Aston Villa Hospitality and Events Department
Villa Park, Birmingham, B6 6HE
www.avfc.co.uk

*********

No mention of this just being for a briefing and the Villa insider told me that everyone also had a phone call asking "are you available to work for the Middlesbrough friendly on 30th July'

*********

As an addition:

The presentation we had to endure was in 3 parts.

1. Introduction from the DPS where we learned about the new kiosk offering and that they`ve rebranded all the kiosks and spent £22,000 on a new uniform that makes those that have to wear it looked like they work in a kebab shop

2. A health and safety brief (one that we`ve seen a hundred times) from the health and safety officer and he seemingly didn`t know what a dust pan and brush was.

3. A security brief from the head of security who couldn`t work a powerpoint presentation and told us nothing either.

To top it off, they couldn`t even spell sauce correctly and the presentation contained other mistakes.

Do we know the sauce of this information?

[The Laughing Policeman]

All you need to know is that it was "a Villa Insider". Or to put it into lay mans terms a shit stirrer.

[PeterWithesShin]

Maybe it's Elaine again?

[AV89]

All you need to know is that it was "a Villa Insider". Or to put it into lay mans terms a shit stirrer.

Paul Franks?

[Holtemeister]

Bear bare with ... im just going to ketchup with the latest post

[dave shelley]

All you need to know is that it was "a Villa Insider". Or to put it into lay mans terms a shit stirrer.

LTA?

[dave.woodhall]

There's more holes in that letter than our defence.

[Ads]

Even if it's legit, who gives a shit. It was a meeting, you thought it was shite, so what?

[paul_e]

Three things from AV89's post make me suspicious. 1.The club is paying the minimum wage of "around £5 an hour" if that bit is true then the club can expect a lawsuit from the government pretty soon.
2.An official email from your employer that begins "Hi" seems very informal to me.
3." In finalising, certain staff are already in the process of contacting acas to seek advice on whether employment law has been broken so Aston Villa won`t have heard the last of this."  So being asked to attend a meeting that you found useless is a breach of employment law?
In my humble opinion your honour I think it's a load of bollocks.

1.  Lots of the staff will be fairly young so there's nothing illegal about it - https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates - specifically the 18-20 wage of £5.30 - the morality of it with all the money sloshing about in football is another matter and there have been plenty of protests about that over the last couple of years.
2. Not that uncommon, depends a lot of the culture, my work does the same with all mass mails from the senior management.
3. They were asked to come into work and have been paid for it, they may have assumed they were doing more hours though so there is potential for a challenge there but it seems unlikely it'll go very far.

It actually seems legitimate to me but I don't really see anything wrong with it other than some pretty shoddy communication.  Given there will be more hours available to staff this season than there has been for years I don't know if I'd be complaining too much.

I've worked for places int he past that have done this, once i got told I had to be in the office for 5am with no more details only to turn up and find out that they needed 2 people to do a job and everyone else (out of 7 of us) would be doing the normal 9-5 hours.  Given I don't drive I'd had to pay for a taxi and then ended up  sat around for 3 1/2 hours (unpaid) before my shift started I was seriously pissed off and ranted about it for a few days but I was 21 and they paid well for the work I did so I just lived with it.

[paul_e]

Back to us have we actually got any money to spend of our own?  This Ross McCormack bid is being labelled as us having funds freed up from the Gana and Clark sales.

From the hip, I don't think hes got a pot to piss in to be honest.

Or given RDM and Xia both said we'd made some buys but wanted to concentrate on reducing the size of the squad for a while before finishing the purchases they could justr be doing exactly what they said.  shall we wait until the end of the window before bitching about 'net spend' please (which is nonsense as a measure anyway).