🚀 go-pugleaf

Date:	Thu 04/08/04 04:20 AM 
 

Dear Premier Bracks
Government of Victoria

The last 12 months has seen both public and private sector companies
deal with one of the most unacceptable workplace issues of today;
pornographic material distributed amongst company employees using a
companies e-mail system.

There was the matter at the Centerlink office in Ballarat in January
2004 where several employees were sacked, with even the AIRC rejecting
a claim of unfair dismissal by an employee due to the unacceptable
nature of this activity. Then there has been the mayor of the Greater
City of Dandenong Council last Sept 2003 caught using Council
equipment accessing pornography. More recently cases have been cited
with Australia Post, the Defence Department in Canberra, Hamersley
Iron, the WA Health Service and only last February with Woolworths,
which was rocked by a porn scandal where dozens of managers were
sacked over the issue.

Now take a company (Connex) who has convinced your Government it can
operate the entire rail network of Melbourne, subsidised by the
taxpayers of Victoria over the next five years to the tune of  $345m
pa, where the priority of some its most senior executives is to
download and distribute to other staff pornographic material via
e-mail, on a basis more regular than running trains.

The Age article of 20 March 2003 provided details about a sex and
pornography scandal in the workplace at Connex, with Connex finally
admitting that its staff engaged in this behaviour:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/19/1079199421820.html

What is clear it that Connex is covering up the full extent of the
e-mail pornography scandal.

It is easy for Mr Bob Annells to claim e-mails are fake since to admit
to them implicates the most senior executives in the pornography
scandal. You would hardly expect him to say the CEO of Connex (Bruce
Hughes) was one of the main people involved in the distribution of
pornographic material.

Have Connex provided any documents to show who within the company was
involved? NO; and they won't because it will prove that people such as
Bruce Hughes (CEO for MTE), Barry James (GM Human Resources Connex
Trains Melbourne), Pat Kelly (GM Technical MTE), Peter Schwind (Train
Services Manager Trains Melbourne) plus other general and line
managers were all involved. Up to about 20 people, just about all of
whom are ex-PTC employees employed by Connex back in August 1999.

They were all involved in this serious misconduct of downloading and
distributing to each other sexually explicit and discriminatory
material.
 
I wonder what counselling and discipline was served upon the senior
executives and senior managers such as Bruce Hughes and Barry James.
Perhaps they counselled themselves, especially as Barry James is
responsible for EEO within the company. The answer is of course NONE.

The newspaper report also leaves out the fact that the other
executives who had a "personal involvement" with Mrs Michelle
Mazzarella, the General Manager Marketing at Connex, were Mr Bruce
Hughes the CEO of Connex Transport and Mr Barry James the General
Manager Human Resources.

In the public interest, the question Connex should be made to answer
is who actually was involved in this pornographic e-mail scandal and
what action has really been taken within the company to stop this
behaviour.

The taxpayers of Victoria deserve answers since it is our money Connex
executives have been wasting by engaging in this deplorable behaviour.
Only by sacking those responsible for allowing this behaviour to go on
will we have any faith in those running our train network.

What Connex needs is a culture and attitude change at the senior
management level. This will only be achieved by getting rid of the
ex-PTC managers and bringing in competent people who are more
interested in customer service and value to taxpayers than the
downloading and distribution of lewd material.


Yours Faithfully

M.B.