2010 Board Report

[jaynie]

Geez, I'm not a Parra supporter or member, but I thank the Parra boards past and present for their continual entertainment of the masses. DFv3P and Tingha Palace seems like the drama that just keeps giving and giving.
At the same time it is sad to see all this drama and the continual leaks distracting from the performance of the football club on the field.

The claim that they are chasing $100K of Members money through their Project Pittsburgh witch hunt is someone cancelled out by the relevation that they have spend $130K on Mr Findlay and $170K on solicitors to do so - that doesn't add up to me? It's bad business (and bad politics) to spend $300K to chase $100K and then crow about it.

And that $300K figure doesn't include the "settlement" costs that appear to have been paid to John Kolc and Sharon Wilson for unfair dismissal... as a Member I'm more concerned about that $300K or $400K (or possibly more?) of "our money" that's been unnecessarily spent by "our Board" on their witch hunt (which Spags goes on to deny is taking place, even though he's given the evidence for it in this letter, imo).

Didn't the same $300K cost for the investigation+legals also turn up a potential saving of $600k on cleaning costs from a poorly negotiated contract by one of the terminated employees, as well as a number of other savings? My reading of the document is that the $300K is the total of the legal costs not just the cost to recover the $100K. To me that does not sound like "bad business" as you say. Based soley on the document, the importance of this overpayment for cleaning services should not be overlooked when judging the value of the investigation. To an outsider with no personal investment in the situation it is the seemingly 'smaller' issues like this (or the HR manager who had a final warning on her record!) that really stand out.

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

NO REINSTATEMENT AFTER 33 YEARS OF UNBLEMISHED RECORD
The employee commenced work with the employer as a waitress in 1976 and worked her way up to become catering manager.
The employer conducted an investigation regarding employee involvement in board elections and found that the catering manager had e-mailed confidential documents including department reports, profit and loss figures, stock data, monthly sales comparisons and trading analysis for each venue.
The catering manager had e-mailed the information to her husband. The employer dismissed the employee for her actions.
The Tribunal accepted that the actions of the employee were deliberate and could have harmed the business of the employer but the Tribunal also accepted that the employee was motivated to help her husband.
The employee’s representative submitted that there had not been procedural fairness in the dismissal process in that there was no record of a formal investigation into the matter, that there were no records of interviews or discussions and no proper particulars had been put to the employee.
Industrial Relations Newsletter — 15-03-10/2
Solutions For The Workplace
Page 2
Industrial Relations Newsletter — 15-03-10/2
Solutions For The Workplace
Page 3
The Tribunal took the view that this was an instance where the
employee failed to appreciate the potential consequences
of what had been done rather than intentionally attempting
to harm the employer.
The Tribunal found that the employer had a valid reason to
dismiss the employee but given the length of the employee’s
service and the unblemished record the dismissal was
“harsh”.
The employee sought to be reinstated and the Tribunal
refused that application as the difficulty of establishing
the necessary trust and confidence and the lack of
other available positions of work with the employer that
reinstatement was not an option.
The Tribunal advised that because the dismissal was
harsh that it would have ordered the payment of 18 weeks
compensation but as the employee was guilty of misconduct
the amount was reduced to 12 weeks pay.
Delaney –v- Parramatta Leagues Club Limited [2010] FWA 1164
(22 February 2010)
The Issues
While the employee was guilty of serious misconduct that
was proven the length of employment of the employee for
a period of 33 years and no previous warnings had to be
taken into account when the employee was dismissed.
One of the principles applied by the Tribunal in these
matters is “a fair go all round” test.
Our View
While the misconduct of the employee was serious the
employer should have taken into account the period of
previous employment of the employee and perhaps a first
and final warning may have been appropriate.
However in a practical sense the employer had to act to
protect their business and operations and would appear to
have been left with only a commercial decision to consider
and at the end the employee is no longer employed and
the other employees of the employer were put on notice that
such behaviour would not be acceptable to the employer.
The evidentiary trail or lack of it is also exposed in this
matter and employers are advised that the documentation
and evidentiary trail is critical in these matters.
http://johntamplinconsulting.com.au/...ownload&gid=53

Hmm, I have the resources to find out more about this and possibly about other incidents involving others at or were at the club.

Iv been at my current job for 2 years and there is no way in hell they would get rid of me for something so trivial. How ever, why would she send her husband copies of reports that would not have anything to do with him at all?

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

Are you saying that it has become glaringly obvious that both sides of the fence are acting poorly - running propaganda pieces, using their media friends to present a not-entirely-accurate viewpoint that benefits their particular stance and in general acting in a way that does not befit their position?

If so, I wholeheartedly agree.

Its all this is, this is why I laugh at those taking side.

Both parties are going to do the same thing, its just about who you like more really.

 

[Forty20]

Its all this is, this is why I laugh at those taking side.

Both parties are going to do the same thing, its just about who you like more really.

Sounds awfully like Australian politics then, except in politics we vote for which party we hate the least...

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

Ill vote for who ever does more for the fans and who ever I think will give us the best chance of winning the premiership.

All I want is that bloody Premiership.

 

[mrpwnd]

Ill vote for who ever does more for the fans and who ever I think will give us the best chance of winning the premiership.

All I want is that bloody Premiership.

I'd rather vote for whoever does more for the team...I don't care if the fans are treated like dirt so long as we're winning a premiership.

 

[Maroubra Eel]

Geez, I'm not a Parra supporter or member, but I thank the Parra boards past and present for their continual entertainment of the masses. DFv3P and Tingha Palace seems like the drama that just keeps giving and giving.
At the same time it is sad to see all this drama and the continual leaks distracting from the performance of the football club on the field.



Didn't the same $300K cost for the investigation+legals also turn up a potential saving of $600k on cleaning costs from a poorly negotiated contract by one of the terminated employees, as well as a number of other savings? My reading of the document is that the $300K is the total of the legal costs not just the cost to recover the $100K. To me that does not sound like "bad business" as you say. Based soley on the document, the importance of this overpayment for cleaning services should not be overlooked when judging the value of the investigation. To an outsider with no personal investment in the situation it is the seemingly 'smaller' issues like this (or the HR manager who had a final warning on her record!) that really stand out.

Savings on cleaning contracts are just standard business procedure. Don't need to spend hundreds of thousands on legals to do it. A good CEO would review all major contracts as standard practice. So this doesn't really come into it.

Anyway it's good you take such a keen interest.

 

[cv8z]

Savings on cleaning contracts are just standard business procedure. Don't need to spend hundreds of thousands on legals to do it. A good CEO would review all major contracts as standard practice. So this doesn't really come into it.

Anyway it's good you take such a keen interest.

But it took 30 years to get good business procedure?
I think there were a lot of back handers over the years
We may never know to what extent

 

[Maroubra Eel]

But it took 30 years to get good business procedure?
I think there were a lot of back handers over the years
We may never know to what extent

I agree it's a step in the right direction.

 

[bartman]

Didn't the same $300K cost for the investigation+legals also turn up a potential saving of $600k on cleaning costs from a poorly negotiated contract by one of the terminated employees, as well as a number of other savings? My reading of the document is that the $300K is the total of the legal costs not just the cost to recover the $100K.

It's not how I read it, but it is a possible interpretation.

If so, I think the letter is poorly written piece of communication and could have made its case in that regard much better.

The point has been made that it was the first communication with all members from the club's chairperson, and the first time the club's new CEO appointment has been mentioned to the members (but without any explanation).

Where were the job advertisements? I'm not sure internal appointments that did not test the job market or candidate base can be considered "good governance" (as the letter claims the Board have been pursuing)?

 

[born an eel]

Hmm, I have the resources to find out more about this and possibly about other incidents involving others at or were at the club.

Iv been at my current job for 2 years and there is no way in hell they would get rid of me for something so trivial. How ever, why would she send her husband copies of reports that would not have anything to do with him at all?

if you read the case at fair work australia, her defence was that she was sending them to help him compile his own reports and was sending them for him to use as a template.

http://www.fwa.gov.au/FWAISYS/isysquery/a76515ee-eb8f-4932-b563-27080b4fdfce/2/doc/

I wasn't able to find any others to shed more light on what went on

 

[ParraAds]

It's not how I read it, but it is a possible interpretation.

If so, I think the letter is poorly written piece of communication and could have made its case in that regard much better.

The point has been made that it was the first communication with all members from the club's chairperson, and the first time the club's new CEO appointment has been mentioned to the members (but without any explanation).

Where were the job advertisements? I'm not sure internal appointments that did not test the job market or candidate base can be considered "good governance" (as the letter claims the Board have been pursuing)?

The strange part is that Bentley was appointed CEO only a couple of months after starting as an HR Manager at Parra Leagues.

Does this seem odd to anyone else?

 

[Parra Guru]

I've just read through it, and tbh, it looks like it's been written without that much thought, other than the main point they want to get across "the old board sucked and we are not responsible for anything bad that happened". I really loved the part that highlighted that they had nothing to do with letting fo Mateo, Keating and Inu (It was all DA) but Ozzy had a hand in Signing Maitua and Webb. LMAO. So letting go of players and unpopular options are all the coach's fault.

Sorry the whole thing I actually find so funny. The 'project Pittsburgh' thing was probably the funniest. I'm not saying in any way it's right, but as if this isn't common practise at these types of elections. There is nothing specific described in the report other than them saying how wrong it was that 100k was spent, and this person and that person were 'an integral part' of Project Pittsburgh.

TBH I'm not really as excited as some of the other people on here about the whole thing. Every time an old board leaves, sh*t is going to be uncovered. I actually feel like they are insulting people's intelligence.

 

[Parra Guru]

As for my opinion on the 12-page letter... I've read it, slept on it and read it again. It's clearly more a propaganda piece than straight talking communication to the members, imo.

The propaganda starts in the first sentence, where "our Board" stakes a claim (without evidence) that they are on a path of proper governance. That's political posturing right there, with elections just two and six months away.

The propaganda continues with the selective inclusion of information, and the clever choice of words to describe situations. Under the John Kolc and Sharon Wilson it says they
commenced proceedings in Fair Work Australia "and those proceedings were subsequently settled". This appears to be a sneaky way of saying that John Kolc and Sharon Wilson actually won their unfair dismissal claims against the club/Board...?

Looking at the mentions of Fair Work Australia, it appears that this Board has been found to have unfairly dismissed two people (Kolc and Wilson), has one case still open (Francesco) and claims two "wins" where someone didn't follow through with unfair dismissal action (Grosvenor) and where someone had to be paid their twelve week entitlements (Delaney).

That's only a 50% rate of proper employee terminations in the eyes of Fair Work Australia, with one case to come - and of course the Court Case about Fitzgerald's membership (cleverly not mentioned in the letter, though they're happy to mention a few other "allegations"). I'm not happy my club/Board terminates any employees improperly, let alone 50%, yet Spags seems to think this is a virtue?

The propaganda continues, with the "clever" mention of Peter Wynn as a competitor to the club's merchandise store. Wasn't aware this was even an issue of confusion for any member, but given that Peter Wynn has been reported to be considering running for the FC elections in December, Roy decides to get a negative printed in a letter that goes to all members. They're politicking like crazy ladies and gentlemen, imo.

The claim that they are chasing $100K of Members money through their Project Pittsburgh witch hunt is someone cancelled out by the relevation that they have spend $130K on Mr Findlay and $170K on solicitors to do so - that doesn't add up to me? It's bad business (and bad politics) to spend $300K to chase $100K and then crow about it.

And that $300K figure doesn't include the "settlement" costs that appear to have been paid to John Kolc and Sharon Wilson for unfair dismissal... as a Member I'm more concerned about that $300K or $400K (or possibly more?) of "our money" that's been unnecessarily spent by "our Board" on their witch hunt (which Spags goes on to deny is taking place, even though he's given the evidence for it in this letter, imo).

The DA stuff - they claim no Board involvement in Webb and Maitua, and claim no Osborne involvement in Mateo, Inu and Keating... but fail to mention or address Board involvement/interference in the failed quest to land Quade Cooper.... just convenient, or plain selective politicking?

The financial stuff - it's not very detailed, and until it comes from certified audited financial statements it's not worth the paper it's printed on. Not saying they're deliberately misleading, just that in my line of work I receive organisation's financial figures on the run, and then the final audited ones for the financial often differ by a huuuuge amount.

Personally, observing what's happened with the GFC and world economies, it's a bit ingenious to claim the turnaround from 2008 to 2009 is due to the new Board/administration. Again, in my line of work I've seen financial reports from organisations nearly all turn around in that magnitude, and hardly any had any change of approach/management/directors. It's like blaming politicians at one point in time for global recessions (or crediting them for global growth).

They've reduced executive employment costs - but as stated above had to have (at least) two unfair dismissals to do it, plus a pending court action.

There are some good things they've done in the letter, and for those who accuse me or others of not highlighting the good things... why would I retype them, when Spags has just spent "our money" posting a 12 page pre-election publicity letter to every member. (Incidently, how different is this really to the previous Board sending a much shorter politicking letter in Mandarin to various Tingha Patrons, other than Spags' letter not having any vouhcer and is typed in English...)

Instead I choose to highlight the "missing items", raise the questions that I believe we the Members should be thinking about, and I choose not to blindly swallow Spagnolo's steaming hot pre-election political advertisement/letter like it's gospel.

Spagnolo imo has been shown not to be a man of his word (through his statements and then turnaround on DA seeing out his contract), and if you look at the list of promises from the FC elections, his ticket (which he proudly names throughout this "nuetral" letter) hasn't carried through on many of them within the FC in the past 22 months.

NB. For the slow learners who carry on lately about critical comment, the above is "just an opinion", and if you don't like my opinion then instead of whinging and being paranoid, then please just scroll past or here's the link to ignore my posts: ignore bartman

I completely agree with you Bartman.

 

[jaynie]

Savings on cleaning contracts are just standard business procedure. Don't need to spend hundreds of thousands on legals to do it. A good CEO would review all major contracts as standard practice. So this doesn't really come into it.

Anyway it's good you take such a keen interest.

A saving to the tune of 40% is not standard. If you could identify a way to save around 5-8% I would never of commented, but a 40% saving just demonstrates deeper running issues in a business than a CEO not reviewing major contracts. To me it speaks about issues within the internal culture of the business.

 

[born an eel]

A saving to the tune of 40% is not standard. If you could identify a way to save around 5-8% I would never of commented, but a 40% saving just demonstrates deeper running issues in a business than a CEO not reviewing major contracts. To me it speaks about issues within the internal culture of the business.

while such a big saving may sound great in the report, so does the $11M turn around in club finances. Since we know the change in finances is mainly due to the way it is reported and the sale of assets, we can judge it mainly to be spin. We do not know anything about the cleaning contract to be able to make a fair judgement either way, we do not even know if they are comparing "like" contracts, it could be for a totally different scope of works for all we know.

 

[Stagger eel]

just a quick question for Bartman..

would you have prefered if the board didn't release the report to explain themselves to members??

 

[MarkInTheStands]

I read the board report, and for me it raised more questions than it answered.

I have shown the report to a number of members who are not part of our online community and they have voice the same concerns to me, they wonder about some of the points raised in the report and believe it raised more questions than it answers.

On a looking at the big picture here, the Board has engaged its detractors with fire, It will be interesting to see how this election campaign goes from here. I guess we will all have to wait and see what happens when Hadley gets back from India for round 2.

All I can say is it is interesting times.

Also thank you to Jodeci for stating that Indeed I don't mind change. But I want to see change for the better. As long as the club improves on all fronts then I am happy.

 

[barney gumble]

Fitzy effectively sealed his fate by stating that he couldn't garauntee operations beyond 5 years, at least the current board has the long term in mind.

The report cleared some things up, but raised more questions in other areas. I thought it was a monumental and low cop out to soley blame Anderson for the loss of Mateo, Inu and Keating and the signings of Webb and Maitua. This board had stratagies in place months ago to dump Anderson, so surely they could and should've intervened had they felt so strongly about these signings.

At the end of the day, I'm a passionate fan of the Eels footy club and only care about on field performance, I live too far from the Leagues club to care what happens behind closed doors there.
The releasing of this report was a bold, yet somewhat desperate move to gain support. It will all account for nothing if the footy side doesn't perform well though.

 

[Parra Guru]

just a quick question for Bartman..

would you have prefered if the board didn't release the report to explain themselves to members??

tbh Stagger, it appeared to do nothing but pass the buck and spare them of any wrong doing.