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By Joey Gardiner, 5 July 2001 19:00

NEWS Disgruntled ex-employees of technical support firm iDesk have taken matters into their own hands by opening an online forum to wash the company's dirty laundry in public. It emerged yesterday that the firm, which provides technical support for many of the UK's top ISPs, is to get rid of up to 130 of 300 staff from its head office in Wembley, London. Its COO, Kevin McKenna has also stepped down. The company suffered waves of redundancies in March and April as it struggled to win new business in the midst of a downturn in profits for ISPs. In response to what staff view as mistreatment by the management, employees - and legions of ex-employees - have set up their own forum under the title of "iDesk The Truth!" run by online developer Delphi to air their grievances. On the site, workers complain of bosses hiring friends to fill pointless bureaucratic management roles, and of destroying the business through incompetent management. Workers tell of how they were pressured to "copy and paste" responses to customer queries because "as long as you reply to over 300 support mails you won't get sacked!!!... even though you aren't answering their questions." Workers also complained that the technical department of the firm was run down while managerial layers increased, and that customers were mislead over the number of highly qualified technical staff still present in the company. One ex-employee wrote: "iDesk has been excising its own brains from its skull for years now, in order to replace those vacant spaces with 'mates' that can't actually do anything, so they are given 'management' type roles... telling potential clients that iDesk has a work force of fabulous techies at the ready! It's all proved rather surreal for those of us that know the truth. It was only a matter of time before the whole place caved in on itself." iDesk refused to comment on the allegations included in the online forum. Yesterday CEO Steve Berry issued a statement after news of the latest round of redundancies began to leak. In it, he said: "We are doing everything possible to deploy those staff affected by the changes in alternative roles. Where that is not possible we are dealing with the situation as fairly as possible. "iDesk's new streamlined approach has made it less appropriate to continue with both a CEO and COO on board. Subsequently, business directors will report directly into the CEO and Kevin McKenna has agreed to step aside." According to the iDesk chat forum, the new streamlined approach was not appreciated by the aforementioned McKenna, who allegedly had an audible 'table-crashing' meeting with Berry, before making a rapid exit from the building.