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The following changes to HGFA rules have been submitted to the HGFA Secretary for all members to vote on. You will recieve your ballot paper for voting some time in the next month - on or before the 5th September.
SPECIAL RESOLUTION
Proposed Amendments to the HGFA Constitution.
As per #7.29 & #7.15 of the HGFA Constitution, the following amendments are
put to the membership for a special resolution vote. The items underlined in bold are the
proposed additions to the current rules.
PART 5: DICIPLINING OF MEMBERS
5.1 [...] the Operations Manager may:
5.7.1 suspend any certificates, Licences or privileges issued by the Federation for up to 14
days, pending a hearing before the Disciplinary Tribunal, by forwarding the member
the documents outlined in 5.8.2
5.7.2 notify the Committee who shall immediately appoint a Disciplinary Tribunal consisting
of 3 randomly chosen members of the Federation.
5.7.3 Where the complainant or member named in the complaint is any HGFA board
member or any employee or officer of the HGFA, then the President of a State or
Regional group to which the complainant belongs shall assume the role and all
powers of the HGFA Operations Manager to handle the dispute, and that State or
Regional groups’ committee shall assume the role and powers of the HGFA
committee to appoint the tribunal and enforce any ruling.
Why are these changes necessary?
There are 5 amendments above:-
5.7.1a (the 14 day limit is needed to prevent members being suspended indefinitely without
hearings or evidence)
5.7.1b (the requirement for documentation and evidence to support any suspension is needed
to prevent uninformed, premature, or unfair suspensions and to protect the HGFA against
lawsuits for wrongful suspensions)
5.7.2a (the word “immediately” is needed to remove the potential for unfair delays,
indefinite suspensions, or tribunal tampering)
5.7.2b (random selection is needed, to help prevent dishonest tribunal appointments or other
tampering/bias)
5.7.3 (this the new clause is needed, because without it, the board and HGFA employees are
unable to be held accountable for any dishonest actions of their own, and/or members
involved in disputes with the HGFA are unable access fair hearings or discipline procedures)
An incident occurred earlier this year which highlighted some serious shortcomings in the
HGFA discipline process. The following is an account of this incident, with the relevant
amendment references from above included [in square backets] to explain the necessity for
each of them. The Board and General Manager may dispute this account [5.7.3] of the events
– but in brief – they are as follows:
An apprentice employee of a Board Member was conducting illegal, unsupervised training
operations, and complaints about this situation were not acted upon by the board [5.7.3].
This rouge apprentice incorrectly assumed that a second person, an instructor competing for
business at the same site, was responsible for making the complaint and the apprentice
physically assaulted the instructor when he turned up on launch in full view of numerous
witnesses.
The instructor reported this incident to the police and requested that the HGFA take
disciplinary action. Witness statements and police contact details were made available.
The General Manager immediately suspended the instructor – the victim of the assault, giving
as the only reason for the suspension the excuse that “some parts of the event reported were
questionable”. No evidence was provided [5.7.1b], and when he was later given evidence to
disprove his original “questionable” claims, he did not remove the suspension [5.7.1a]. The
instructor asked the witnesses if any of them had heard from the GM – and they all said “no”
[5.7.1b].
The instructor remained suspended without income and without evidence for several months
[5.7.1a] while the GM prepared a long list of allegations against him. It is unacceptable that
members be suspended indefinitely without evidence – only after the evidence has been
collected, examined, and made available, should any suspension be enforced – otherwise the
chances of unfairly suspending innocent pilots is too great. The GM incredulously included
in his allegations sent to the tribunal his opinion that the instructor “deserved to be assaulted”
on account of the “malicious rumors” circulating about the apprentice. The GM didn’t tell
the tribunal that the Apprentice was in fact guilty of the “rumors”. The GM did concede that
there was no evidence suggesting that the instructor was even involved in those rumors. In
short; the GM’s tribunal instructions fell far short of the impartial, unbiased role he should be
expected to play in such situations [5.7.3].
The tribunal was carefully selected by either the GM or the Board. The HGFA Treasurer was
the employee of the rogue apprentice, and the HGFA President was a close personal friend of
the rogue apprentice [5.7.2b]. The GM explained in the magazine and in replies to the
suspended instructor that the reasons for the long delay included difficulty “selecting the
tribunal”, and the time taken to “train them” [5.7.2a]. Exactly how impartial a tribunal might
be, when it’s been selected and trained by people directly involved in the dispute itself is a
serious ethical issue that needs to be fair, and if anything isn’t fair about it, anyone involved
in corruption of the tribunal need to be held accountable [5.7.3].
Constitution #5.9 states that the tribunal should receive the complaint, the evidence, and the
members response all at once, 14 days after giving the member time to respond. However in
this incident, the GM sent all the allegations without the instructors’ response to the tribunal
in advance [5.7.3]. The instructor was given 14 days to respond, and chose to send his
response in sealed envelopes to prevent the GM altering his reply, or perverting the panels’
impartiality with unfair cover notes etc. The GM ignored this, opened the sealed envelopes,
took considerably longer than 14 days to deliver the remaining material to the tribunal [5.7.3].
Although the GM had many different items of evidence, he deliberately withheld all evidence
from the tribunal that supported the instructors claims (eg: police reports, information about
the Apprentice’s illegal activities, etc), and he chose not to contact any witnesses or obtain
any evidence in support of the instructor. The 5.7.1b amendment makes it mandatory for the
GM to send the tribunal all the evidence, instead of just select parts that might bias their
findings.
As of this writing, many more months have passed, the tribunal has apparently sent their
recommendation/finding to the GM (Chris Fogg) but he is taking a very long time to write
their response into a “report” for the instructor. All this while, the instructor still remains
suspended [5.7.1a].
If you would like the HGFA to operate a fair and unbiased discipline system, and would like
the HGFA itself to be able to be disciplined for breaking the rules, just like you, me, and
other regular pilots can be – please vote in favor of this special resolution.
Signed: 4th August 2009.
Group Information
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