Former town employee critical of workplace review

In response to complaints of abuse from the Town of Coaldale management towards Town employees (since terminated) Coaldale Town Council recently initiated what they describe as an independent Human Resources review. This raised the hopes of myself and other former Town of Coaldale since we believed years of employee concerns and complaints would finally be investigated. Unfortunately, as the details of the HR review unfold, it appears this investigation is unlikely to uncover the true extent of the employee mistreatment that has transpired.

So far, the narrow and restrictive terms for this review that is likely dictated by the town is limiting the ability of former Town employees to contribute input. For example, the announcement of the HR review, inviting input from past Town of Coaldale, employees was only posted for a very short period via the Town of Coaldale website.

Also, neither the HR consultants nor the Town have made reasonable attempts to directly contact many former employees, such as with an email or letter, informing them of the HR review and inviting their input. How are former employees, many of whom have moved away from Coaldale, supposed to know about the investigation or contact the HR investigator? As a matter of the most basic courtesy, this should be expected as a reasonable minimum first step, especially for such a serious matter.

Consequently, a number of former staff, who wanted to participate in the HR review, some with the most damaging complaints, were not even aware of the investigation until the short window of time had elapsed. When these former employees subsequently heard of the HR review and attempted to contact the HR consultant, they were told “Too Late” (only by a few days) they missed the date for submissions, and therefore their input and comments cannot be used! I feel this is another example demonstrating how the town operates, manipulating the outcome of these socalled “independent investigations” and wasting taxpayers’ money. Suppressing and limiting information from past employees that the council needed to hear from makes all of Town Council look bad. I would ask the Town Council to do the right thing. Please allow other former employees to contribute to the HR investigation as they should be able to. Preventing them from doing so will only put further doubt into the integrity of Coaldale Town Councillors and the credibility of your HR report.

This is another reason why the best way to get to the bottom of what is going on at the town office is for a truly independent Municipal Inspection of Coaldale. Unfortunately, this won’t happen soon enough.

Kris Mikado
Coaldale, Alberta

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