During November 2011, Luke Preece prepared a long report for Human Resources in which he blasted Matthew France (a former TBI Kuningan teacher) as the most irresponsible and unstable employee in the history of TBI. In it Luke also writes that Matthew’s grievances against Cam were not “legitimate”. Yet he now goes around contradicting his own word! This document (from November 2011) shows Preece as an expert at character assassination, using slimy innuendo and suggestion to drag Matthew France’s name through the mud. This is how Luke, the “character assassination team leader”, uses his puppets and minions when he is done with them. It shows that Luke has a history of back-stabbing and is skilled at the arts of character assassination, which is what TBI does instead of managing their dysfunctional schools. I have highlighted the most sociopathic, back-stabbing lines. Happy reading.

Summary

I have known Matthew F***** for over three years and in all my time at TBI I have never seen an employee descend in this manner. I believe that there may be other external factors influencing Matthew’s behaviour; however what is clear is that he has an agenda to damage Cameron. This seems to be his motivation going forward as he has no legitimate grievance. Every grievance Matthew has had with Cameron in his time at TBI Jakarta he has generally brought to me, so I am very aware of his issues.

I know a lot about this case as Matthew has contacted me throughout his time at TBI Jakarta. I have spent a lot of time talking to him and have watched his decline closely, so his behaviour at this point comes as no great surprise.

It is my opinion that Matthew is unbalanced in his thinking, has no real legitimate grievance other than some petty issues, and his sole motivation at the moment is causing damage to Cameron. He believes that he is on an internal customer service crusade. I ask the organisation protect Cameron and I from this individual and that we work to find resolution so that damage is not caused by Matthew’s obvious agenda to damage Cameron and the reputation of TBI.

I am sure that this will need to be discussed in further detail, but I hope that this document provided the reader with sufficient background on this case and the teacher in question.

Thanks,

Luke

Also attached to this email was a complete and detailed timetable which detailed how Matthew France (supposedly Luke’s friend) had run amok at TBI. Incredibly, Luke now has the nerve to pretend to be “the teacher’s friend” when he knifes former cronies and accomplices in the back. Here is his long list of reasons why France couldn’t be trusted and the grievances against Cam were not “legitimate”. His word.

April 2010: Matthew led a group of teachers to meet with me to discuss concerns with TBI Kuningan management. Many of the concerns were related to school procedures and rules that had been mandated by the then School Manager. Matthew’s individual concerns were with Cameron and some of the school policies that Cameron had enforced under the previous SM. These included

• Being forced to take a day of leave to travel to Bandung for TBI visa purposes
• Being told he could not wear open toed shoes when he had injured his foot.

To Cameron’s great relief many of these local policies were scrapped and a new ‘teacher friendly environment’ was to be a focus.

April to June 2011: Matthew made it clear to me on several occasions that he did still not like Cameron and appeared unwilling to turn over a new leaf and start anew. Cameron recognised a need to engage with Matthew and appointed him Senior Teacher-at this point Cameron and I recognised that Matthew was a valuable teacher who had been alienated by former management and we both felt Matthew would ‘come around’.  Matthew was regularly engaged by management and he even applied for School Manager at this point. He was considered an important ‘core teacher’.

January 2011: Cameron was appointed SM at TBI Kuningan and Matthew expressed to me that he wasn’t particularly happy with this.  He clearly still hadn’t ‘forgiven’ Cameron.

July 2011: Matthew delivered the SIAP programme, but expressed unhappiness with scheduling arrangements. This was dealt with and Matthew continued. He was asked to work slightly outside of his contract hours and paid penalty rates for this and did not have any pressure to deliver classes outside of contractual obligations. He was further informed that the 15 minutes beyond the 10 hour window was voluntary.  He commented that he “liked the money” from doing SIAP.

July: Matthew stepped down as Senior Teacher stating that he didn’t want the extra responsibility. At this stage it was obvious that Matthew had become an ‘unwilling participant’ in a school that was now well into its recovery phase and beginning to perform well. New teachers with a very positive attitude had been recruited and previous ‘trouble teachers’ e.g. Colm M****** had left.

August: Matthew did a good job at SIAP and was asked to do a follow up programme in Bandung. This was completely voluntary and Matthew did the course.  Matthew wished to claim laundry expenses for his time at SIAP. Initially this request was refused due the fact that we have no company policy on this, however repeated lobbying by Matthew an arrangement was made whereby he was paid additional travelling time to in lieu of a laundry allowance.

After SIAP Matthew informed Cameron that he did not wish to teach in-house anymore because “TBI made too much money” from it and it wasn’t fair.

September: TBI Kuningan achieved 600 students for the first time in 2 years and had a staff dinner. Matthew declined to attend as he did think the school should have targets. He made it clear that he wasn’t interested in being a team player and it was obvious that he was becoming a negative player in the school

In September Cameron asked Matthew about his future plans and whether he would like to remain at TBI Kuningan next year-Matthew was not committal about his future. At this point all reasonable efforts were still being made to retain Matthew….. we still wanted him to stay despite his questionable attitude.

Throughout the year I have maintained directly correspondence with teachers who will be epoed this year and Matthew is one of these. In a conversation that I had with Matthew in late September/early October he stated that he did not wish to be at TBI Kuningan in 2012. When I mentioned the possibility of other TBI schools Matt said that he saw his future elsewhere and displayed little interest in working for TBI schools in 2012. He wanted to keep his options open (this I think was because he had no other options) so I told him to let me know, but informed him that there were not many positions open so he would need to make his mind up quickly.

October: Despite Matthew communicating to me he was not keen on working at MK in 2012, both Cameron and I took an interest in his case and Cameron informed Matthew that he “wanted Matthew to stay, if Matthew wanted to stay”.  Cameron went on to say that it was clear Matthew had had a change of attitude with regards to his position with TBI, and that his attitude would need to be more positive if here were to remain with the school in 2012. Matthew agreed with this. However he again remained non-committal.  Cameron advised him that he would need at answer regarding Matthew’s intentions by October 31st. During this conversation Cameron also raised the possibility of Matthew teaching at TBI Medan or Bandung. Matthew stated that he was only really interested in working in Jakarta.

In late October both Cameron and I had a conversation with Matthew where we told him that we needed to know his plans for planning purposes and that if he didn’t make a decision a replacement would be hired. This was an amiable conversation and Matthew was reminded that he should let Cameron know by 31st October and that if he did not a replacement would be hired for MK and he would have to deal directly with me to see if there were KTC options available at TBI schools. Again in this conversation Matthew was non-committal.

November: One week into November Matthew had still not informed Cameron of his intentions. Cameron raised this with me and the decision was made to advise Matthew of this by email.  As per the conversation that took place about 10 days earlier Cameron hired a replacement and then emailed Matt to tell him to communicate with me about placing for 2012 if he wanted to work at TBI.  It was decided that after Matthew’s non-committable responses and failure to meet communication deadlines that the change in official reporting line for future  job placement needed to be officially recorded, hence the email. This should not have come as a surprise to Matthew as he was clearly told if he did not get back to Cameron by the deadline, he would be directed to me.

The only thing that I will concede is that perhaps Cameron could have tapped on him on the shoulder and said “Matt, I had to hire someone else and I am now emailing Luke now so you can talk to him about other options”. In retrospect we would obviously do this, but considering the many, many exchanges leading up to this and the clarity provided on what would happened post 31st Oct, I think it is a minor thing. I believe Matthew actually would have posted a Facebook comment anyway as he manufactured a situation where a replacement had to be appointed so he could play the victim and discredit Cameron.

7th Nov: Matthew posted a comment on Facebook stating that he had been informed via email that his services were no longer required and used an obscenity in the statement.The statement invited negative comment from the usual band of ex TBI teachers who have a reputation for such behaviour. The comments were defamatory of Cameron and of TBI.

Sensing a serious situation arising I phoned Matthew and told him it was in his and everyone’s best interests to take down his Facebook posting. He struggled to see the magnitude of posting a factually inaccurate comment that invited slanderous comments about his direct manager and employer, but agreed to take it down “out of respect for me”.  This cooled the situation and in the end only a handful of people saw the comment.

He sent me an SMS the following day that seemed to imply he might put it up again and next time wouldn’t take it down if I asked.