Guarav Sharma's former staffer said he was a "narcissist" and difficult to work for. Photo / Getty Images
Guarav Sharma's former staffer said he was a "narcissist" and difficult to work for. Photo / Getty Images
A former staffer to Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma has spoken out about an alleged culture of bullying that existed in his office, which they claim was so bad it forced them into needing counselling.
The staffer, who the Herald has agreed not to name, described the Hamilton West MP as "controlling" and believed Sharma tried to isolate his staff from other Labour parliamentary staff in Hamilton.
Asked for his response today, Sharma did not address the specific allegations made by the staffer who spoke to the Herald.
However, he said he had refused to extend the contract of one of his former staffers because he was unhappy with their work.
He said his team manager had forwarded complaints to Parliamentary Service about that staffer, but they were never investigated "despite repeated requests". He said he had repeated that request as recently as yesterday "where Parliamentary Service refused to look into these matters and just wanted to move on".
He said hiring new staff into Sharma's office had been "paused ... with the intention of providing further assistance before more staff were hired into his office".
Webb said the whips continued to engage with Sharma including as recently as Thursday, the day he went public with the claims.
On Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Sharma was still "valued" in Labour.
"While we dispute the allegations he has made, Gaurav is a valued member of the team, and we want to make sure he is getting the support he needs," she said. Ardern did not address the specific allegations.
"Managing staff can be hard so our focus with Gaurav from the start has been to take a constructive approach that we hope would set him up for the long-term as an MP and place coaching and mentoring and other supports around in order to ensure that was the case," Ardern said.
The staffer alleged that by the time they arrived in Sharma's office, he had already had bad relationships with staff. They said they tried to quit almost immediately, but he talked them into staying.
The staffer said they were reduced to tears within weeks of beginning work, and eventually Parliamentary Service was able to secure counselling for them after they began to feel depressed and considered self-harm.
"I've never cried at work before but this guy had me in tears - he couldn't process my emotion and didn't want to deal with it. He more or less told me 'you need to get hard and handle this'," the staffer claimed.
The staffer said they were tasked with getting the appropriate sizes for ads to run in a community newsletter.
Instead of consulting the in-house guide on advertising, they called the newsletter staff directly.
Sharma, who was meant to be in virtual Parliament, allegedly "went off" at the staff member, telling them they should not be speaking directly to "stakeholders".
"I'm just trying to give him the answer as quickly as possible," the staffer said. "I felt like I was constantly watched and constantly tested," they said.
The worker claimed Sharma would get on staffers' backs about the state of their desks, whether windows had been closed, and one staffer leaving a desk fan on. The staffer said they would turn the desk fan off for the other staff member to avoid Sharma growing frustrated.
They claimed Sharma would get disappointed when staff members put fridge magnets in the wrong box.
"It was like walking on eggshells," they said.
Eventually, the staffer was put in touch with Parliamentary Service.
Parliamentary Service has "relationship managers" - people who MPs staff can talk to about their employment without needing to speak to the MP themselves.
Sharma arranged for the staffer to meet with a manager to discuss the issues.
But the staffer claimed Sharma would not allow them to have private communication with their relationship manager.
"We were told we weren't allowed to contact our relationship manager without permission," they said.
The staffer said they just "let everything out" when speaking to their manager.
"I told her everything I had been experiencing in the office," the staffer said, adding that Parliamentary Service and the Labour Party had handled the incident well.
"I've never been depressed or wanted to harm myself. I'm a happy person who has always been positive. I had never known about mental health," the staffer said.
"I was thinking of ways that I could kill myself. I didn't want to go back to work. I would have rather killed myself than go back to work," they said.
The staffer said they had previously been confident at work, and felt able to speak up in meetings.
"I lost my confidence. I'm still recovering from it."
The staffer claimed Sharma isolated his staff from other parts of the Labour Party in Hamilton, ostensibly out of what they believe was his jealousy of Labour's other MPs in the area, like Jamie Strange, and because he allegedly held grudges against other parts of the party who he believed had worked against his attempts to be selected as an MP.
"We were in Hamilton and there are a few other Labour MPs in Hamilton and we had no relationship with their offices," they said.
The staffer claimed that while Sharma never yelled at them, he did yell at other staff members.
"He yelled at other staff members. I didn't get the full brunt of it," they said.
Sharma wrote in his Herald column that he felt gaslit at Parliament. The staffer accused Sharma of gaslighting staffers himself.
After leaving, the staffer got in touch with Sharma to try to "clear the air" and move on.
Sharma allegedly told the staffer there was "nothing else to say", but said that he and another member of staff had recovered from everything he had been put through by his staff.
"He told me that [he] and the senior MP support had recovered from all I had put them through.
