Mark Bas­sant,

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Five months af­ter close to 50 Ven­ture Cred­it Union (VCU) em­ploy­ees pe­ti­tioned the ex­ec­u­tive about their loss of con­fi­dence in CEO Rox­anne Solomon, the board of di­rec­tors has hired an in­de­pen­dent ex­pert to con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their claims.

Over the last few months, the CEO’s ac­tions and the VCU’s op­er­a­tions have been un­der the mi­cro­scope in an on­go­ing Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In a mem­o­ran­dum sent out to all staff on Oc­to­ber 28, ti­tled “Em­ploy­ee Pe­ti­tions and Al­le­ga­tions against CEO,” Ven­ture Cred­it Union pres­i­dent Hay­den Fer­reira said over the past few weeks “a num­ber of em­ploy­ees and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive union have writ­ten to the Cred­it Union’s Board of Di­rec­tors ex­press­ing con­cerns about the con­duct of ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.”

Fer­reira said in light of the al­le­ga­tions raised by the em­ploy­ees, “Con­se­quent­ly, the Board of Di­rec­tors has en­gaged the ser­vices of an in­de­pen­dent ex­pert to con­duct a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to all of the al­le­ga­tions to de­ter­mine their ve­rac­i­ty, con­text, and sig­nif­i­cance. The out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and the rec­om­men­da­tions, will help to in­form the Board’s de­ter­mi­na­tion of the course of ac­tion to be tak­en even as we re­main mind­ful of our oblig­a­tions un­der our Bye Laws as re­lat­ed to pe­ti­tions.”

He added, “The Con­sul­tant, Hy­acinth Guy Hu­man Re­source Com­pa­ny, was se­lect­ed via a com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process, and pro­vides ex­per­tise in Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment, In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions, Con­flict Man­age­ment, and Ac­count­ing. As you would ap­pre­ci­ate, it was im­por­tant to find an in­de­pen­dent qual­i­fied, and ex­pe­ri­enced per­son/agency to con­duct this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and this process has con­tributed to the de­lay in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with you.”

Em­ploy­ees from the San Fer­nan­do, Arou­ca and Cou­va branch­es signed the pe­ti­tion, af­ter a let­ter was sent to the board and su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee, the branch ex­ec­u­tive team and Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU) sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Ja­son Brown out­lin­ing why they had lost faith in the CEO.

The points of con­tention in­clud­ed: low staff morale due to un­re­al­is­tic and achiev­able tar­gets; the so­ci­ety’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty de­clin­ing un­der the CEO’s stew­ard­ship; mi­cro­manag­ing of staff man­agers to the ex­tent that lines of au­thor­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty have been blurred; spend­ing the so­ci­ety’s monies on con­sul­tants to give the same ad­vice/so­lu­tions al­ready prof­fered by staff, deemed to be re­dun­dant and a waste­ful use of the so­ci­ety’s monies.

Oth­er points raised in the pe­ti­tion in­clud­ed: abuse of pow­er in the ap­pli­ca­tion of poli­cies re: re­quest­ing sick leave; amend­ing poli­cies with­out Board ap­proval; the il­le­gal lock­out of staff on June 21, 2022, (In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions of­fence); Breach of poli­cies re Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy (change of the Per­for­mance Ap­praisal Process); Non-pay­ment of bonus to staff qual­i­fied for same (filed as a griev­ance) and be­rat­ing staff in front of oth­er em­ploy­ees (lack of re­spect and pro­fes­sion­al con­duct).

In the staff mem­o­ran­dum, Fer­reira said they would be guid­ed by the cred­it union’s Code of Ethics and were “du­ty bound to be fair and bal­anced in as­sess­ing every sit­u­a­tion.” He said the re­view process would com­mence on the last day of Oc­to­ber and take a pe­ri­od of five weeks. He said some staff mem­bers would be in­vit­ed or asked to be in­ter­viewed by the con­sult­ing team and in­for­ma­tion they pro­vid­ed would be held in the strictest con­fi­dence with­out their names, ti­tles, or oth­er­wise be­ing used in the re­port.

CEO to stay on job

How­ev­er, sev­er­al se­nior VCU in­sid­ers say Solomon re­mained on the job and are ques­tion­ing why she had not been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed.

Ques­tions were sent to Fer­reira via What­sApp last week and he sent a doc­u­ment that an­swered ques­tions per­ti­nent to the CEO.

Fer­reira sent a let­ter that was ad­dressed to BIG­WU, who raised sim­i­lar con­cerns and which was penned by VCU board sec­re­tary Kei­th Lon­don. BIG­WU had sug­gest­ed the CEO be placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, the let­ter con­tend­ed.

But the board’s re­ply was, “First­ly, the mem­bers of the Board wish to un­der­score that we all share the union’s view that the cir­cum­stances de­mand a thor­ough, in­de­pen­dent, and un­bi­ased in­ves­ti­ga­tion and this in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be con­duct­ed in a free and fair man­ner, that en­sures pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty through­out the process. This is pre­cise­ly why the Board sought and con­tract­ed the ser­vices of an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tor.”

The let­ter al­so stat­ed that the board was not send­ing the CEO on leave or re­mov­ing her at this time, adding, “It is to be not­ed that the pur­pose of this re­view is to gath­er the facts rel­e­vant to the is­sues raised in the staff pe­ti­tions and to re­move the CEO at this point would be pre­sump­tu­ous and/or in­ju­di­cious.”