CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Other Scam
Monday morning, bright and early Persephone rocked up to the Élan offices. She had only 8 more interviews to conduct and her report was already almost complete. She was feeling confident that she had the situation under control with Craig and his potential targets and the money was almost in her grasp. The only thing that was nagging at her now was the disquiet that she was starting to feel about the 200 people who were about to lose their livelihoods. There was very little she could do about the situation, as the company was determined to make the cuts, and the managers she had interviewed so far had been ruthless in their pursuit of ridding their little empires of anyone who either: they disliked; was potentially better than them; had refused to sleep with them; or was otherwise a threat to them. The senior team, who had the same problem in spades, encouraged this middle management behaviour. There had been a cutthroat approach to reward and punishment in Élan for years and Persephone had seen it in action when the CEO had spoken to Sophia in his office as he appointed Persephone to the job. Persephone was sick of dealing with this sort of behaviour, which seemed to have percolated throughout corporate Australia and had led to a work environment for people that was mostly driven by fear.
While Persephone had been conducting the interviews, she had come across a few people who she was told were ‘untouchable’. She had seen this in several other companies before, and was curious as to what was behind this. She decided to have a bit of a chat with a couple of these people to see if she could uncover why nobody wanted them made redundant. They all worked in the general insurance division, and their length of service varied quite widely. They were mostly relatively junior people, and unremarkable on the surface. They were both men and women, so the sex angle was less likely, although not out of the question. The first two Persephone interviewed were tight-lipped and refused to discuss anything about their jobs, their history with the company and their future plans. They were angry that Persephone was even talking to them, and as she pushed a little harder, it was clear to her that something was scaring them. She backed off quickly, so as not to raise anybody’s suspicions.
When she sat down with Maria, a middle-aged woman who worked in the home insurance group of the general insurance division, she got quite a different response. Maria was certainly angry, but she didn’t appear afraid to talk. Persephone noticed that her clothes hung loosely on her and under the heavy make up, her face was dry and sallow. She asked Maria if she was feeling okay and if she wanted a glass of water. Maria waved her off, telling her that she wanted to get this off her chest and that she was really happy that someone was finally interested in fixing this.
“ This goes right to the top”, started Maria, “you’re not going to believe what these bastards are up to.”
Persephone was delighted to hear this. It looked as though she might have come across something that she could use to punish the people at the top of the organisation for the atrocious way they had treated their staff, their customers and their shareholders for years and years. She asked Maria to continue. It was like opening the floodgates. Maria started by saying that she was very angry that her boss had taken her aside and told her that while there are a number of redundancies being offered that she was not going to be considered because she was ‘protected’. She had told him that she didn’t want to be ‘protected’, and that given her cancer, which her boss knew all about, she would be delighted to receive a redundancy package which she would spend on a world cruise rather than having to endure another bout of futile chemotherapy with all its horrible side-effects. She had promised him to keep her mouth shut and in any case, he didn’t have to worry for too long as her doctors had told her that her chances of a cure were now very low, and she should put her affairs in order. She didn’t have any children and her husband had left her after her mastectomy, so this cruise was a bit of a dream for her but she could only afford it with a redundancy package. Her boss was unmoved and told her that there was nothing he could do. Maria was furious, as she also believed that the cancer has been made worse by the long-term ongoing stress of having to live with this really big secret.
“I’ve watched the bastards who engineered this scheme make millions and millions of dollars while the only thing I have received in return apart from a small cash bonus – which they only paid me so they had a hold over me - was threats of losing my job and going to jail should I talk.”
According to Maria, Rob Prentice (Sophia’s husband) who was now the CFO of the company, used to run the general insurance division. When he was in that job, he spotted an opportunity to build a property development business on the side by some really nasty and underhand means. He identified underinsured aging properties that, if you could acquire the houses, you could knock them down and build significant high value properties such as blocks of units or townhouses. These properties were throughout Sydney but mostly in high value harbourside suburbs. Élan Insurance had just less than 40% of the home insurance market in Sydney. He secretly ‘red flagged’ each of these potential sites for which they held the insurance policy, and given that there were thousands of these properties, at least a dozen or so every year were severely damaged or destroyed by flood or fire or storm damage. When this happened, the claims clerks (of which Maria was one) were instructed to sit on the claim so that Rob Prentice could make his move. He needed each property to be under insured so that the owners could not rebuild for the amount of the claim. If the property fitted his parameters, then while the claim was being disputed, through another company that he and his wife owned, hidden in a family trust, they would visit the owners of the property (who were mostly elderly with very little or no income) and make an offer to buy the property at significantly more than the value of the claim, and a fair bit less than the market value. The owners were given very little time to accept the offer, and the high-pressure tactics on people who were already traumatised by the loss of their home were frequently successful. When that happened they would redevelop the property into apartments or the like. Over the past 10 years with the help of a small number of claims staff, they had made millions.
Persephone thanked Maria and asked her what she would like her to do with this information. Maria told her that if she could get her redundancy, then once Maria was on the cruise ship then Persephone was welcome to do what ever she wanted. Persephone promised to make sure that Maria was included on the list. She wasn’t entirely certain how she was going to do this given the level of resistance, but she thought she could work something out. Maria finally broke down and cried. Persephone, feeling a bit awkward, gave her a tissue and patted her on the shoulder. When she stopped crying Maria fixed her make up, gave Persephone an enormous hug, and went back to her desk with a bit of a spring in her step.
This was perfect for Persephone, not only did she have something in her power to really hurt this company and its senior management, who after 3 weeks had demonstrated to her that they really were amongst the nastiest that corporate Australia had to offer, but she also had something really good to give to Reg once she had finished to keep him focused away from Craig.
In the meantime, Persephone was determined to do her bit wherever she could, and even though years ago she had given up trying to change things from within as a corporate executive, she felt there were still things she could to as a consultant to alleviate some of the distress and indignity that these soon to be redundant people were going to face. She settled down to her computer and started to write her recommendations on the specifics of how to deal with the process of terminating the employment of 200 loyal staff. Before finalising this part of her report, Persephone needed to gain the support of Sophia the HR director.
If rumours about Sophia were true, this was going to be difficult, but she had to give it a try. She set up a meeting in Sophia’s pretentious coffee shop, hoping to put her at ease. Once perched on their tiny stools, Persephone started on her pitch.
“I’m pretty mu
ch done with the list of people and while I am planning on going through it in some detail with you in the next day or so, I thought it would be a good time to talk to you about the process that we need to run to get through this in an efficient and appropriate manner.” Persephone confidently started, “In my experience, there are several ways we can get this done, and providing a dignified exit for your people will not only be a decent thing to do, but will also protect the company’s reputation and minimise risk of future action by angry ex-employees.”
Before she could go any further, Sophia interrupted.
“Look, Poppy, we are spending quite enough time and money on this exercise already. I’m sure you have some great ideas, but we have done things like this plenty of times before and I am confident that we can handle this in our normal way with no problems. Why don’t you just finish up the list and let me handle this?”
Persephone was keen not to give up. She persevered in trying to get Sophia to consider including outplacement services in the package being given to the staff, managing the process to allow the people to return to their desks after being told of the redundancy, giving them assistance with transporting their personal effects and other such simple courtesies. She was met with a stony silence from Sophia and she quickly realised that she was getting nowhere with this argument so she tried another more detailed explanation.
“Small-scale redundancy exercises have small-scale risks attached. The situation here is quite different. The chance that someone will be angry enough to take on an unfair dismissal action against Élan is quite high. They will certainly be able to find themselves a rat-bag lawyer who will take it on a contingency basis, just for the publicity. Even though they won’t succeed - as you are being very careful about how you go about this, Élan’s reputation will suffer in the press. Dealing with this once it happens will be massively more expensive than heading it off by giving them a bit more than they are actually entitled to by law.”
Persephone could see that she wasn’t really getting her point across, but continued, “At the very least this will give you a much better story to tell the press when the shit hits the fan.”
Sophia appeared to be giving this argument some consideration, but after a short pause, she reiterated that she was still going to handle this part herself in her own way. She was keen to let Persephone know that she was not going to spend a single dollar more of the company’s money on these people than she was legally required to, as this was her job as a senior executive at the company. Persephone was disappointed but not surprised. Pretty much everyone she had met at Élan who worked in any sort of management or leadership role had not been interested in the welfare either of his or her staff. None of them cared about looking after the interests of the company either, even though like Sophia, they would protest this if pushed. The atmosphere of fear that they had built over the years had meant that the only people they cared about were themselves. Shareholders and customers never got a look-in. As Persephone sat back and looked at Sophia, she marvelled that there hadn’t been more instances of employee driven fraud. Upon reflection she realised there may well have been plenty more, but the management was so afraid that it would get out into the public arena that they just buried it.
Persephone decided to shut up. She was not going to get anywhere with Sophia and she needed to get this assignment finished and the redundancies, especially Craig’s, completed. She resolved to put some recommendations in her report, even if they were buried at the back so that the senior people, Sophia included would not read them (attention span of these people being notoriously short) but she had given them a chance to do the right thing. She would have one more go at her weekly report to the CEO, but she would be careful not to offend Sophia and would let Thierry know that this was not an approach that Sophia supported. Finishing their coffees, the women headed back to the office; Persephone to conduct a few more painful interviews and Sophia to make sure that she completed her plan to conduct the redundancy execution herself at minimal cost to gain Thierry’s support.
By the end of the week, Persephone had completed all her interviews, had a list of people to be made redundant that had been approved by Sophia, including the unfortunate Maria, who Persephone managed to get approved by hinting that she was a little puzzled as to why Maria’s boss was so reticent to let her go when Maria was such an ideal candidate. She suggested to Sophia that she was happy to investigate this if necessary as it probably bore looking at. Funnily enough, Sophia quickly approved Maria’s inclusion on the list.
She was then ready for a final presentation to the CEO and senior management team. Persephone had managed to find three more long-serving employees that were almost universally hated misogynists who had sexually harassed most of the female front line workers. It was not lost on the senior management team that they were also getting rid of some people who were high-risk employees anyway. Craig’s name went entirely unnoticed in the mix. After the presentation, the CEO thanked Persephone for her work and told her that he was confident that Sophia could handle the actual implementation. Secretly Persephone was quite pleased – that was the part that had the highest chance of going badly and not being associated with the impending cock-up suited her just fine.
As Persephone predicted, the redundancy process at Élan was far from smooth. Although she was not present for the meetings with staff being made redundant due to Sophia’s insistence on managing it all herself, Persephone got a great view of the process as stories leaked into the press. The most entertaining stories were penned by a particularly acerbic columnist Hugh Penrite, working for one of the last remaining newspapers in Sydney not owned by multibillionaire businessmen.
His first tale was a ripper.
Today at Élan International, the French multinational behemoth that has single-handedly redefined the term ‘détente’; the diamond-encrusted and Versace-suited HR Director Sophia Prentice told us, “a small number” of employees were “reluctantly retrenched”.
As the long line of non-French speaking ex-employees were turfed out unceremoniously onto George Street, we were treated to the sight of a large sweaty security guard of Middle Eastern appearance wrestling staplers and manila folders from the grasp of the sobbing downtrodden workers as they emerged, carrying small cardboard boxes with photos of heretofore happy children and pets, half-dead plants and purloined office equipment. The pile of recovered contraband climbed inexorably, drawing a crowd of onlookers, eager to catch the first sight of resistance from the sacked proletariat. With Marie Antoinette (aka Sophia Prentice) watching from on high, they didn’t have to wait long. As a young woman wearing a wide belt in lieu of a skirt and tottering out on sky-scraping platform shoes was confronted by the person we now know as Rafiq (or “Rafiq you dirty pig” as uttered by said young woman), she dropped the box, tore off her top, revealing a large set of breasts barely held back by a red lace bra and screamed at him, “here, you dirty bastard, search me! It’s not like you haven’t been here before!”
Rafiq, clearly uncertain as to what he should do, bent down to pick up the shirt. Just in time for his head to connect with the business end of a large platform shoe. The crowd roared in support of the half-naked woman who, encouraged by their chants, proceeded to pick up staplers, tape dispensers and other heavy items from the pile and hurl them at the unfortunate Rafiq, who by this stage was lying on the ground, arms over his head, crying. The onlookers felt that she needed some help and a number of them picked up their own projectiles, now throwing them through the doors to the lobby of the Élan building, breaking the glass and drawing the attention of passing police. After enquiring of the mob as to the reason for the disturbance, the police went off in search of illegally parked vehicles in the vicinity as these would clearly pose more of a danger to society than the destruction of this edifice of French colonialism.
Meanwhile, the steady stream of retrenched workers continued, although at least these new ones managed to hang onto t
he staplers.
Your writer, upon hearing of these events, was determined to understand what lay behind this tragedy. Tomorrow we will be bringing you some tales from behind the oak doors of the insurance company, casting light on how such a clearly caring and responsible group of highly paid executives manage through the stressful and personally distressing situation that has clearly been engendered by the poor behaviour of the irresponsible workers involved.
The following day was even better as Hugh was on a roll.
Today, the day after the breakdown of order at the George Street Offices of Élan, the multinational insurance company that manages to repatriate several billions of dollars of profit to France each year whilst avoiding having to pay more than $3.56 in company tax in Australia, we are shining the light on a triumph in employee relations that has been so successful that the Australian Council of Trade Unions issued a thank you statement for the 250% increase in membership enquiries across Australia yesterday. Their opening statement reads, “We are forever in the debt of the management of Élan International for yesterday’s demonstration of how to reward the loyalty and hard work of hundreds of our brothers and sisters and reminding us all that the union movement is still a vital component of today’s commercial and industrial landscape.”
My assistants approached CEO Thierry Chiraq and the aforementioned HR Director Sophia Prentice, but they both declined to comment on yesterday’s events. I have therefore had to rely on the interviews that I conducted with a large number of ex-employees of this compassionate and responsible company. So as to ensure that they remain protected from any retribution from the capitalist thugs who may seek to part them from their small but important statutory entitlements in court, I am using a typical example of these interviews and refer to the ex-employee as Sheila.
Sheila’s tale of the day was heart-warming. Upon arriving at work, she was summoned to a meeting with her manager and HR on the 65th floor of the building. Risking a nosebleed from the height, she tremulously pressed the button on the lift, and emerged onto an oak-panelled corridor that clearly was the province of hallowed clients and executives. She was excited at the prospect of what was obviously going to be some sort of promotion. She was ushered into a meeting room with “Champs Elysee” etched on a brass panel by a man dressed as a butler from the late 19th century. Inside at the far end of a 30 seat boardroom table, sat her manager Bob and some young child from HR with a pad and pen poised to take down any significant utterances. Bob waved Sheila into a chair at the near end of the table, and asked in a loud voice, due to the distance between them, “You are probably wondering why you are here today, Shirley.”
“It’s Sheila, actually”
“So Shirley, you may be aware that the company has been experiencing a slight downturn in earnings in the past three quarters, coupled with a deterioration in market bond rates and escalation of the actuarial forecasts for climate risk.”
Sheila nodded, not understanding a word. They didn’t normally discuss such matters in the call centre, preferring to chat about celebrity scandals or the latest diet sensation in the news.
“Well, Shirley, as a result of this ‘perfect storm’ we have had to make a few changes. In order to protect the company’s position and the future of key personnel upon whom we rely for revenue assurance, we have made the decision to rationalise the broader workforce, paying special attention to our customer contact resources.”
Sheila was still none the wiser. He continued, “Tiffany here has an envelope that shows you the generous sum of money that once you sign this form that is intended to protect both you and Élan, you will have transferred to your bank account today. After signing, you may return to your desk to collect the belongings that you have accumulated in your time with us. So as to further protect you, we have provided a security guard who will escort you back to your desk and the out of the office.”
The penny dropped. She was being sacked. Tiffany walked around the table, thrust the 5-page document at Sheila and pointed at the space on page 5 for her to sign. When Sheila made moves to try to read the document, Tiffany huffed and waved around the piece of paper with an amount that looked roughly like 3 month’s salary and said, “Can you just sign this now? We have a lot more staff to see today and we don’t have time for you all to read the entire document. It’s very difficult to understand for anyone without legal and HR training anyway, so you would just be wasting your time. Unless you sign it, I can’t release the money so you won’t be getting anything.”
In shock, and seeing the meagre amount (which turned out upon inspection to be the minimum due under law) disappearing, Sheila scrawled her name and fighting through tears as she was wondering what to tell her husband they were going to do about the mortgage and feeding the children, she took the proffered envelope and staggered out to be met by the enormous security guard. The last thing she heard as she left the boardroom was an irritated Bob asking Tiffany if “….they were all going to be difficult like that….”
Feeling like a criminal, Sheila went back to her desk, where some anonymous person had packed up and placed her personal belongings into a cardboard box. She looked into it, and saw at the top the photos of her children, which were now missing the corners, having been ripped unceremoniously from the partition where they had been neatly pinned. The rest of the call centre team were occupied taking customer calls, and none of them dared to look at Sheila as she came into the office. In a moment of retaliation, as the security guard glanced towards the exit, Sheila grabbed the stapler marked clearly “property of Sheila, do NOT steal” and shoved it to the bottom of the box, under her cardigan and pack of tampons that someone had been kind enough to take out of her desk drawer. Holding back tears, she called out “Goodbye everyone” and walked to the lift. Gazing steadfastly at their screens, nobody replied.
We have asked Sheila and a number of other ex-employees for a copy of the document that they all signed, but have so far been unable to obtain it. We are confident however, that it will contain clauses threatening the employee with terrible consequences should they even think about saying anything nasty about Élan or the way they have been treated. Luckily Sheila and the other 299 retrenched employees have me to tell the tale of the de-humanising manner of their dismissal without fear of retribution. They also have the resources of internationally renowned legal firm Tiler & Highland who are running a class action in the Federal Court against Élan for underpayment of entitlements. It would appear that they forgot to pay out leave and also taxed nearly all of them at the wrong rate. Giles Goodenough, senior partner told this paper that, “ We are determined to protect the rights of workers in this case and will be seeking punitive damages to the sum of several million dollars in addition to retrieving their rightfully owed monies.” Any worker who was retrenched by Élan can contact the firm on 02 9555 1234. You will not have to pay for any of this, as it is being conducted on a pro-bono basis. Perhaps because the managing partner in Sydney lost a close personal friend in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985 and is a bit anti-French as a result.
Persephone read Hugh’s articles with glee. All was going exactly as she had predicted in her warnings to Sophia.
Serve them right.
In the mean time, Craig had been busy doing his own research. He had ten people he had to track down without anyone noticing and a limited time to get all the information he could before the axe fell. He still had his day job to which he had to pretend to pay attention, at least for a couple of weeks. He couldn’t wait to be out of the company with his nice payout and head up the coast for days upon endless days of surfing, drug-taking and shagging Queensland chicks.
He decided to make a list of his targets, put it away for a month or so, then get on with eliminating these people in order of the highest risk first so he could relax and enjoy his retirement. His payout would be plenty to live on for at least a year, so he didn’t have to rush.
Persep
hone and Isaac had been watching carefully, but so far had seen no activity by Craig that would lead them to activate their plans. They realised that Craig had probably decided to get out of the company before he acted, so they patiently waited for their plans to come together.