Kids,
This is why you shouldn't drink too much at staff functions.
Statement from Mark McInnes
18 June 2010
At two recent company functions I behaved in a manner unbecoming of the high standard
expected of a chief executive officer to a female staff member. As a result of this conduct I have
offered my resignation to the David Jones board and we have agreed on the mutual termination
of my employment with the company, effective immediately.
As a chief executive officer and as a person I have a responsibility to many, and today I formally
acknowledge that I have committed serious errors of judgment and have inexcusably let down
the female staff member. I have also let down my partner, my family, all my staff, the board and
our shareholders. I apologise to everyone I have let down.
In resigning immediately it is my hope that I will minimise the impact of my errors of judgment
on all and on David Jones, a company I have been proud to be employed by for 13 years and
have had the honour of leading for the last 7 years.
I would like to thank my colleagues for their support during my time with the company. I am
very sorry to be leaving in these circumstances and wish all involved with David Jones continued
success.
My partner and I will be overseas for the foreseeable future.
anyone know what the precise nature of his errors of judgment were?
haha this is gold!
wonder what his payout will be?
$2m
$2m? fuck!
Last time i touched up a co-worker all I got was the sack and visit to the doctor!
what did he do?
the allegations against him by the female staff member haven’t been made public
She will save this for when new idea offer enough cash for the story no doubt.
especially when she finds out he gets $2mill and she doesn't.
SMH
Mr McInnes will receive $1.9 million in severance pay including entitlements - less than the amount his contract entitled him to after 13 years with the retailer, the company said.
This is the female employee, Kristy Fraser-Kirk, whom Mark McInnes sexually harassed
fivehead.
1.9 Mill payout? I'm sure all that us plebs would get is fired and a day in court.
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Alannah Hill, doesn't she make a living out of clothing? So it stands to reason that she's vapid and shallow, as are the people who define themselves by their clothing (hi, Hipsters).
to put it in perspective, I remember there was a case near where I live in hawthorn called 'cafe vamp' where four men responsible for the relentless bullying of a teenage waitress (who later killed herself) were only convicted and fined $115,000. so it seems alot when you consider this. but I guess the family could still sue the people involved. but 37mil seems like a lot.
I understood the damages amount was not being sought as compensation for the woman, but as punitive damages, ie in order to teach a lesson to others. So it's not right to make out as if her ''injury'' was worth $37m, but that the $37m is the deterrent.
oh dear, i have just taken my alannah hill clothes that i'm wearing today off in protest
Alannah Hill was born out of a penguin apparently. Might explain the hampered brain activity.
i dont have a problem with what AH said, i think she's great and have always loved her straight up no bullshit crazy aunty norma talk.
I'm not seeing how it's fair to punish share holders and employees of a store because one dickhead couldn't keep it in his pants.
The case should be against the culprit and anyone who aided him not the store.
Maybe. I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, SHUT UP! LEAVE ME ALONE!
Fraser-Kirk's Statement of Claim is interesting reading.
The culprit was the CEO. The board may have covered up for him. Since they're the two highest offices in the company's structure, how can you not punish the company?
If the board was being responsible to shareholders they should have smacked MacInnes into place long ago.
Deveny has opened her trap on this in the Age today reminiscent of Helen Garner with the First Stone. ''This is not the feminism we fought for.'' AKA:''I'm friends with the offender, harden the fuck up you young sluzzahs.'' Cue Virginia Trioli response novel.
Anyway, DJ's behaved appalingly- they owed her a duty of care and protection from being fezzied in the workplace - so they can suffer in their houndstooth jocks.
Thanks for the clarification too Sheik on punitive damages. Inneresting. I hope she gets a decent settlement (which they obviously wouldn't cough up in the first place when they were negotiating privately) and I wouldn't care if she kept it.
God Alannah Hill is a fucking idiot, what a stupid comment to make about such a thing.
Sorry Devine not Deveny.
I just don't think the point is that SOME women don't take offence at being man-handled.The point is - NOT APPROPRIATE, and that McInnes is a SERIAL OFFENDER.
Am betting that plenty more ladies come forward.
Sorry sale. What a goose.
So nobody else thought this was merely a brilliant marketing ploy by Alannah Hill, or Max Marxson putting her up to it? Retail is down, so why not go after some free PR for a sale?
God if that were true, it would make me so so depressed.
2DayFM & Kyle Sanderlands play the press for free PR all the time. It's not rocket surgery.
If what I read in that is true (I didn't read the whole thing, but got about half way) then I hope that she wins whatever she can get. That company sounds exactly like the company I recently worked for - a bunch of pricks who think they're god just because they're a big company with lots of money.
At my old work, there was a guy that was being a prick to everybody for weeks. This culminated in him getting physically threatening and abusive with one of the guys from night shift. Instead of getting sacked, that asshole got to remain in a high-powered role in the company until the end of his contract (about another 11 months), and had two company-funded functions during this time in his honour, complete with gifts and toasts and all the usual bullshit. I also had a friend quit because she was unhappy about how the company dealt with a report of sexual assault against her. I know they also paid out two of my friends, but don't know the details (as they're restricted from talking about it now).
Institutionalised bullshit like this is worth fighting, and deserves more than a slap on the wrist.
This dessert is like a fuck in the mouth - matt preston, 2010
From Crikey
Were Kristy Fraser-Kirk’s PR advisers snoozing on the job?
by Mel Campbell
Kristy Fraser-Kirk’s $37 million s-xual harassment suit against David Jones and its erstwhile CEO Mark McInnes has resulted in a private settlement estimated to be about $850,000. This may be Australia’s biggest ever payout for s-xual harassment, overtaking nearly $500,000 awarded to South Australian woman Malgorzata Poniatowska in July.
It’s heartening news for women who previously may have felt too intimidated to take action against harassment at work, and a wake-up call for companies that previously may not have had an incentive to take s-xual harassment allegations seriously.
But that’s not how it’s being reported in the media. It seems rather ironic that the former DJ publicist -- and her publicist, Anthony McClellan, from AMC Media -- either didn’t anticipate or failed to prevent a storm of adverse publicity surrounding her case.
Surely, when Fraser-Kirk and her PR team deliberately timed her first public appearance to upstage David Jones’ spring/summer fashion launch, they realised they were provoking their opponents to open a can of houndstooth whoop-ass? They should have been on their toes. Instead, they lost control of the story.
So it was that we read how Fraser-Kirk had greedily knocked back her former employer’s earlier offer of $8 million, ''won’t share a cent'' of her eventual payout -- contradicting her earlier vow to donate it all to charity -- and even wanted David Jones to pay for her recent ''New York escape''? She might even have ruined Christmas!
Most damningly of all, the 27-year-old was constantly, monotonously identified as a ''junior publicist'', as if to underscore her general naivete and poor professional judgement.
Meanwhile, as the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out, there has been very little corresponding criticism of Mark McInnes, who has been represented by Sue Cato and Matthew Horan of Cato Counsel.
Rather, poor wittle Mark, whose pregnant girlfriend and ''powerful friends'' are loyally standing by him, had ''begged for mercy'' from Fraser-Kirk, who he claimed had actually hit on him. Now he may be forced to personally fund her eventual payout.
Crikey also wonders who tipped off the Sydney Morning Herald’s Diary that Horan was spotted looking ''shocked'' when told that copies of court documents would cost $38. ''I shouldn't have had lunch today,'' McInnes’ Bob Cratchit-esque spinner was overheard nobly professing while rummaging for coins. A nice touch.
Meanwhile, Fraser-Kirk’s PR team seemed oddly guileless. When The Australian’s Suzannah Moran asked both sides’ publicists for comment on their strategies, McClellan offered a full response in writing, while Cato and Horan refused to go on the record.
Being forthcoming has turned into a major liability for Fraser-Kirk. So many details of the case have now leaked that it’s unlikely she will be able to parlay her story into tell-all magazine features or book deals. Commentators have also speculated that David Jones was able to negotiate so low a payout with Fraser-Kirk because the case was already public enough for the retailer not to see the point of ''hush money''.
As the SMH’s Ian Verrender has observed, the journalists who ate up Cato’s spin are equally to blame for the mean, misogynist tone of this case’s coverage.
But was Fraser-Kirk’s team even interested in providing a feminist counter-narrative -- that of a brave young woman who took on a powerful man heading a pitiless corporation, endured the humiliation of public scrutiny, and prevailed?