Alibaba fires manager accused of sexually assaulting colleague Chinese tech giant Alibaba has terminated the employment of a manager accused of sexually assaulting a female colleague. News of the alleged assault came to light on Weibo, China's analogue for Twitter, when screenshots of a post to Alibaba's intranet appeared. The Register has seen the post and it is harrowing: it details the …
"Chinese State media has strongly criticised Alibaba for not taking responsibility for the matter, and not using its wealth to create a decent corporate culture."
Besides profit, the reluctance to address the underlying culture is a pervasive problem. See (in just the last few weeks) Activision, NY Governor Cuomo, and the Australian government.
Indeed, the problem is global. In the past I attended quite a few drinking events and karaoke parlours. Normally when female office staff were present the drinking would be relatively muted and the karaoke in respectable venues. However, there are numerous karaoke bars which are simply fronts for prostitution. So one wonders wtf was going on.
OK pull up a chair...
There's this system of government known as "Communism". Whilst it doesn't really work, China is a communist country and the government tries very hard to portray an image that they're all good communists.
In communism, everyone should work for the glory of the country.
You see comrade?
In the context profit means money and nothing else.
Much of science and therefore tech developments have more to do with hom saps innate curiosity than anything else. Religion also had a major part to play such as the maths developed by Islamic scholars. Paper and the magnetic compass were not invented for profit, nor was the vaccination. But venal peopoe only see venality, which is why they are venal.
Pretty straightforward I'd say. Whether they practice it or not, China is a communist country with a nominally communist government.
Communism rejects the profit motive as a driver for society and postulates (whether true or not) a happy band of noble workers putting their effort in to advance the betterment of all.
Thus, is this context, and again, whether it works that way in real life or not, culturally, yes they really do expect everyone to be working together for the common good, and not for personal profit.
The firing is PR policy not HR policy.
Turn a blind eye to accusations, hell fire and brimstone for negative PR and public corporate embarrassment (making c levels answer awkward questions is a career limiting move) . The accused would have gotten a bonus if it had remained under wraps...
Not so simple for sexual harrassment. Where you do need a set of policies. But even for sexual assault, you can't just call the police. You can't just have a policy to suspend someone if they're being investigated then sack them if they're convicted, or keep them on if they aren't. You need to be faster moving than the justice system, for a start. And you can (and probably have to) work on lower standards of evidence.
Because if your bar for keeping people employed is that the police don't charge them then you'll be employing a lot of terrible people. The police only enforce the laws, and they have a high burden of proof as the consequence for breaking laws is very serious. Thus a lot of things you should be fired for aren't going to get you legally charged.
"Why can't you just call the police? What have I missed? Because, I sure as hell would."
What you have missed is what "you can't just" means. It does not mean that you can't call the police. It means that calling the police is insufficient, I.E. you have to do more than that. In this case, the suggestion appears to be that the police are called, and while you wait for them, you perform a concurrent investigation and take action based on the results of that investigation which is presumed to be faster and possibly more reliable than the police's effort. There may be other suggestions as well.
Sorry, I thought my next sentence made it clear. Calling the police is not enough. What then? To over simplify, you’re still left employing either a sex offender or someone who’ll make up an allegation, and you can’t have them both working in the same place while it’s resolved. Plus the police investigation, and any trial, will take time. So what to do in the meantime.
Plus justice, and innocent until proven guilty, of course. But selfishly, that’s expensive. Suspending people on full pay for a couple of years isn’t ideal. And the trial is to a higher standard of proof and might not come to a clear conclusion. Sex offences often coming down to deciding about consent given between two people alone in a room.
In HR's shoes, you probably want rid of both people, and to forget the whole thing. I remember feeling very sorry for my managers in a case where someone made an allegation of minor stalking, after two employees' relationship broke down. Clearly they didn’t want to, and weren’t trained to, work out if he was guilty. They tried to sort stuff out, but they’re not Relate either. He soon left, and got another job. She then started stirring up trouble. Making stuff up, or at least massively exaggerating, about those managers and also bringing "problems" to them, and eventually also left. Or was pushed? Was that because she’d made up the original accusations? Or because she was angry about how it was handled? Whatever the truth is, management suffered a lot of headaches, and wasted a lot of time. My impression is they tried to handle it reasonably, in the circumstances, but both parties left angry with them, and it caused a lot of disruption. The police certainly didn’t resolve anything.
I recall a discussion, several years ago, when I sat on the board of a local secondary school. One member asked the rector (headmaster) if he had a comprehensive drugs (abuse) policy. "No," was his reply, "Any pupil found with drugs, or suspected of having drugs, is reported straight to the police."
No messing. One sixth-former was reported with possession (reported by fellow sixth-formers) and we saw the approach in action.
At another meeting, when the rector was asked about what he saw as significant problems at the school, something that kept him awake at night, his response was smoking - a small number of older pupils had been caught smoking and he wanted to nip that in the bud. My response was that almost every other school head in the country would probably love to give that as one of their biggest problems.
He may sound excessively authoritarian but I know, both from first hand observation and from my daughters who attended the school, that he was widely respected (and not out of fear - he knew the majority of his pupils by first names). Unfortunately, he was just too good and was offered a move that was just too good to refuse.
>You sexually assault someone ? You're fired and the police are called in.
You're fired if you're the victim, forced to go to an arbitration chosen by the company, your contract says you can't sue and you have to sign a gagging order if you want to keep healthcare.
While I agree with the sentiment such policies exist, correctly, primarily for the victims - what to do, how to complain, who are the appropriate contacts inside the company and what are the appropriate authorities outside the company, useful contact numbers, etc., etc.
After a complaint is filed and investigated and is found justified your sentiment should, indeed, apply.
72hour week in other words, we might dress it up as overtime but I'm sure we all know plenty of people who work similar hours in many sectors.
It ain't great but it really ain't that uncommon, look at all the handringing over crunch in games dev (lack of crunch gets you cyberpunk 2077)...
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