A Union for Bullies - by Manisha Bhati

The views in this post are my own, based on my lived experience and personal recollection.  My ERA proceedings against the Department of Internal Affairs are ongoing. All supporting documents and evidence will be disclosed through that process.

This is the story of the PSA, New Zealand's largest union which some public servants join and pay for so that it can help if there are any issues that arise with our employers in public service.

I had never had any experience with a union before I came to New Zealand.  Not in the United States, not in India, not anywhere I worked across the Middle East.  Where I came from, a union was something factory floors had, not something anyone in IT ever thought about.  So, when I joined DIA, it never crossed my mind that I should join one too.  I also believed (naively at the time) that a public service agency would be a responsible employer and would take their duty of care towards their employees seriously.

If you have read this series, you would know the history in detail.  For the new readers, here is a brief summary of the events.

Mr D, the senior technical specialist who reported to me, began bullying me almost from the day he returned from leave, in my second week in the role.  DIA would not let me raise it as a formal complaint for four months.  It took my blood pressure spiking to a dangerous level in May 2025, and my GP attributing that spike directly to the upward bullying, before DIA treated any of it as something that warranted even a meeting.  When that meeting finally happened, on 11 June 2025, I was told there would be no investigation at all.  The conversation was redirected instead to my own mental wellbeing, whether I could manage the stress of the job.  I went to Chief Executive Paul James after that, because I had run out of anywhere else inside DIA to take it.  Two days later I was placed on special leave over a diary note I had never been shown or asked about.

It was a colleague of mine, who introduced me to the union.  She had raised her own complaint about Mr D on 12 May 2025, and PSA had given her a delegate immediately, the ordinary channel, the way it's supposed to work.  She and her delegate talked often as her case moved forward.  In one of those conversations, she told her delegate what was happening to me too.

PSA doesn't normally let someone join in the middle of a live conflict; her delegate told her.  But an exception could be made for me, because Mr D was causing me psychological harm and was a known bully inside PSA.  Before I had ever paid PSA a cent, before I had asked them for anything, they already knew what he was.  Knowing that, they let me join.

So I joined in June 2025, and I wrote to PSA almost immediately, to request them to represent me.  At first, a delegate agreed to support me, a very kind person who was horrified at what has been happening to me at DIA.  Then Ms B found out.  That delegate was instructed to stop, and all delegates were told not to mention my name in PSA discussions at all, as though I were something to be managed around rather than a member they represented.  I only learned this later through documents later shared with me by DIA or through employees in PSA.

Mr D and Ms B lodged complaints about me in relation to the same dispute on 18 June 2025. That was the same day I was placed on special leave.

Eventually, DIA appointed an external investigator, Johanna Drayton, to examine all three complaints as one process, mine against Mr D, and theirs against me.  Through her interview transcripts with Drayton, I came to know that Ms M had been recruited as a “flying monkey”

Mr D told Drayton he had not originally intended to complain about me at all, that senior members at PSA had advised him to make a formal complaint.

Meanwhile, when I requested PSA for representation, I was told my membership had commenced after the relevant events had begun.  I wrote to PSA on 2 July 2025, and asked by name for Ms Fitzsimons, or the appropriate senior representative, to be told what I was facing.  I told them exactly what that was, a bullying complaint about a colleague who by then had two active investigations against him and a known history of prior complaints, while I had been placed on discretionary leave, isolated from my team, and pressured through HR processes that hadn't followed fair or timely standards.  I asked them to reconsider their decision not to support me.

An organiser acknowledged receipt the next morning and said it had been passed to the appropriate organiser and assistant secretariat.  After not hearing anything I wrote again on 10 July 2025, saying I would deeply appreciate even a brief discussion with Fitzsimons.  I was told again that my email had been forwarded and an update requested. Fitzsimons never responded.

I also requested PSA to represent me against CEO Andy James's complaint, since DIA treated that as a different matter arising after I joined PSA.  When an answer finally came from PSA, it came from an organiser Mr T.  PSA would not support me, he wrote, now or in the future.  The way I see it, DIA and PSA were each actively working against me in supporting all retaliatiory complaints against me.

Refused by PSA at every stage, I paid for a lawyer myself, nearly $20,000 so far.

I understood then why so many people cannot afford to see a case like this through.  Employment lawyers in New Zealand are expensive, and an organisation that never has to account publicly for what it spends fighting a single member has very little incentive to stop.

By October, I had stopped asking PSA to represent me because it couldn’t be trusted.  Through Privacy Act disclosures, I later found that Ms B had been in direct contact with DIA HR around the time the decision was made to place me on leave.

Then, on 6 November 2025, an email arrived out of nowhere from Ms B.  An invitation to a PSA rally I had never registered for.  It was sent to my personal email, alongside DIA staff at their work addresses.  I had no reason to be on that list.  She had no reason to include me.  It seemed to me like an intimidation tactic, a form of bullying, showing up in my inbox from the person representing both people who had complained about me, for something I had never asked to be part of.

I have been writing to the complaints team to no avail.  So I wrote to the National Secretaries, Mr Leo and Ms Fitzsimons, first in November 2025.  That was never acknowledged.  After months of inaction my advocate, Allan Halse, wrote to PSA's National Secretaries, in March 2026, then again in May 2026.  One letter was finally acknowledged about a month later, however, no action has been taken since.  Readers can see the details of my experience through these documents and maybe help me understand why Ms Fitzsimons and Mr Leo would not engage with us.  Are they scared of Ms B and Mr D?  Are they so afraid of retaliation that they won't act?  PSA doesn't release data about complaints made against its own organisers.  We can't OIA them either, since PSA isn't a public service agency under the Crown.

I have now filed a complaint about all of this with the Human Rights Commission on the grounds that the PSA’s conduct is racially motivated.

If you are a PSA member and you believe you've been let down the way I was, you don't have to accept that nothing can be done.  In March 2026, the Employment Court ordered MERAS, the midwives' union, to pay $50,000 to a member after finding it had breached its duty of good faith toward her by supporting another member's complaint against her instead of representing her own.  That case went through the Employment Relations Authority first.  I am happy to help PSA members who want to pursue the same path.  See Voices@WorkNZ | Accountability & Transparency in the NZ Public Service

EDITOR’S NOTE: Until the ERA has determined the personal grievance claim(s), no comment will be made on the merits of the claim.