Re: Poor America ... and Rich America

Thankfully "work choices" the conservative policy for Australian workers, has been repealed, much to the relief of many workers, forced to try and bargain, for themselves, a work place agreement. This was designed to take power away from workers, and unions, and put all the power in the hands of the corporations, and bosses.

This is a case history of the behaviour of one company in Australia.

spud

http://www.mygreenway.com.au/Download.html


2009 What has changed in the workplace? CASE STUDY

The Rudd government won the 2007 election on a platfrom of climate change intiatives and a repeal of workchoices legislation. The Howard government was determined to push forward if re-elected to erode workers rights further in favour of employers. They wanted to make it simpler to reduce wages, sack employees and allow businesses to increase profits by reducing their wages bill.

Companies had been screaming for this for years. And Howard was their man. Unfortunately for John Howard, he and his Workchoices man Joe Hockey could not pull any more wool over the eyes of working Australians.

As Paul Keating said, “Workchoices is just the nasty bitchy piece of legislation designed to knock off the income of the low paid”.

Fast forward and the Global Financial crisis strikes hard, workers clinging to their jobs as unemployment rises by the minute. Companies, trading on this panic and banks typically the first to start, offload employees by the hundred in Australia and the thousand in the US.

Other companies follow suit. Any excuse to dump workers and yes they need to shed some costs as turnover slumps. But how they do it and the devastation it causes means that companies should be more careful and use a softer approach. Because what they do in the short term will inevitably turn around and bite them on the bum in medium term anyway.

Put simply if you cut staff and wages very soon you end up with reduced takings as there are less dollars capable of being spent in business. Retail, services, food, entertainment, restaurants all suffer. And so the spiral downwards continues.

But this is pretty easy to understand. What you may not be aware of is just how brazen some companies are in dumping staff.

They hide behind excuses, lies and red tape. They bend rules or break them when it suits and deny natural justice if they can.

What I am talking about I hear you say?

Well let me elaborate...

The company I am talking about is REAL Insurance.

REAL is a privately owned insurance company from South Africa operating under the parent, Hollard Insurance. They don't have shareholders, they are a global entity and currently they are making a big splash in the Australian market by advertising heavily and undercutting the opposition in the premium stakes.

Retail insurance is very competitive. If you keep undercutting your opposition, eventually your claims bill exceeds your premium collections and the company eventually leaves the market, raises its premiums or cuts its costs in other ways.

REAL is not making money and is desperate to sell more policies. It is hinging its hopes on attracting more customers, increasing conversion rates to astronomical levels and praying no-one claims. And if they do, making sure its really difficult to do so. Tricky stuff, when you want to grow faster than everyone else. (HIH I hear you some of you say).

At the helm is a well known operator brought in by the South Africans. A man responsible for building up APIA and once heading up AAMI, Brian Keane.

Keane has overseen the shift to heavy advertising, relaxed underwriting standards to accept more policies, and even the switching off of recorded conversations so that the more daring and hungrier incentivised sales staff can say more to sell more.

The big bonus carrot is dangled before everyone's eyes.

So when a scandal breaks within the walls of the company that surrounds the new sales guru what does REAL do?

It fakes an investigation.

Allegations were made of sexua| harrassment and drug dealing. Human resources extracted signed statements from more than seven seperate sources.

The right thing to do, once due process was followed was to dismiss the culprit and any other collaberators and then rebuild and get on with it. Learning from the process.

Instead it plays another game.

It informs the accused of what is going on. The accused summons the IT department to his office and has them erase any written evidence against him over a period of a couple of days.

The accused devises a cunning plan. He picks the three youngest accusers and individually offers them promotion. If they drop their complaints. "They were just a joke" he tells them. He dangles another carrot, the youngsters comply with the offer to be fast-tracked. Maybe they did get things wrong they justify to themselves. 'The what's in it for me' attitude kicks in. So easy.

Next, they call in the remaining and expendable complainants. The investigating panel spends about three days working out what to do.

They meet with the first person. Within 20 minutes, he is fired, allegedly for sending an email with a swear word in it. Big deal. But it gets him out of the picture and makes his testimony inadmissable to the investigation. An unfair dismissal case may ensue, but that is chicken feed compared to losing their gun.

Next they call in their star witness. They promise her the world, job security, full support and a fair outcome.

They not only coax out confirmation of the signed statement, they also convince her to spill the beans including names, dates and times of even more unscrupulous behaviour that went on.

They ask again for others that may confirm these allegations. Painstakingly and without fear, but somewhat reserved, this company woman delivers up a full and complete list of those who were eyewitnesses who can confirm everything.

Thanking her for the information they promise a swift and satisfactory resolution. They ask her for what she wants. She asks only for a safe workplace for her and her colleagues to continue their work. That's it.

Three days later a meeting is called.

And the REAL insurance sting is about to begin.

The first thing they do is dismantle each signed statement by saying that each one is connected to the star witness in some way to say they are friends and that they could not accept their testimonies at all.

Next, they offer up an alternate set of witnesses. All of whom are unnamed and deny anything at all took place but none of whom are willing to sign anything. All too convenient.

Finally, they pull out a wad of A4 paper and off the top of it produce an email that allegedly establishes a friendship between the lead witnesses (so what) and then another that was forwarded by the star witness to her team leader showing a rude picture that was received internally. The plan, by management it seems was to get an admission from the star witness and then sack her. Case closed.

But surprisingly the witnesses explanation is accepted. She was disgusted by the email, sent it to her team leader as a register of protest and that was it.

The investgators then declare the investigation stagnant. They tell the witness to take time off and recover.

Two days later she receives notification that her job will be terminated unless she can show reason otherwise. She replies with a reasonable and sound explanation.

REAL does not bother to reply, but two weeks later offers her a pittance to resign with a deadline to accept or get nothing. She does not and she won't. She has done nothing wrong. Confusingly, they do not terminate her employment.

She engages a lawyer and her union.

6 weeks later she has not been terminated. And she has not been paid. Not even her holiday leave.

She is broke. She cannot get Centrelink benefits as she has not been fired. They think she is still working. She cannot get charity for the same reasons. The job market is tough and despite going for interviews, she cannot provide a reference becuase REAL has said they will not proivde one at all. Except for a record of service. Sadly, she was the standout performer in her team but is not allowed to get anyone to clarify this. For REAL, this is part of the strategy.

So REAL knows what they are doing. They are in REAL trouble if this story gets out or hits the right jurisdiction. It will no doubt be a costly commercial decision. But one in which they are prepared to gamble whilst at the same time build up an expensive legal bill. It seems legal bills don't come from the same budget. So they do what all corporate bullies do.

They try to starve the victim, in this case the whistleblower into accepting the pittance. That if she does accept, they will then reduce the offer further just to bully some more.

Suddenly, no-one is available, Human resources are not allowed to be involved, only internal legal counsel and a part-time senior executive. Convenient.

Just a little too big for their boots I think.

The latest development occurs when the Union, finally gaining traction manages to track down the part-time senior executive who realises that he must at least pay the outstanding wages. He says the outstanding and overdue wages will be paid into the star witnesses bank account on Wednesday night.

On Thursday morning the money is not there. The same on Friday and Saturday. The senior exec lied to the union.

That about sums it up. REAL insurance is run by liars. Bandits. Happy to allow illegal activities to take place in the workplace so long as the bottom line is unaffected in the pursuit of sales and bonuses. And maybe profits.

It's not the first time that a company has behaved like this and it surely won't be the last. But only when the real truth can get out, we will ever get to change anything. Like abhorrent corporate behaviour.

Until then, the law is just a business and the rich and powerful or at least those with the most cash win. Always.

What have we become?

Capitalism fell into a giant hole in the US looking to the government to socialise its debt. Then having the hide to complain when its staff could not access bail out funds to pay for bonuses that were to incentivise them.

You see, incentive is the call of the capitalist. It's what they rely on to motivate workers and improve efficiency and profit and productivity. Yet they still want to receive capitallist bonuses even when the share price collapses to its lowest level in 50 years. Even when they are on the brink of collapse.

And whilst the corporations still believe in this entitlement, nothing will ever change. Capitalism thrives on poor people being in the majority. It's why John Howard attempted Workchoices. It's why globalisation has actually been the great irony of capitalisms endless pursuit of growth. It will actually be its downfall. But that's a story for another day.

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