Ex-SAP CTO walks away with €7.1M payout after scandal SAP paid former CTO Jürgen Müller €7.1 million ($7.5 million) after he left the German software company by mutual agreement in September last year. Müller departed following an "incident" at a company event earlier in the year. At the time, SAP said its supervisory board had reached a "mutual agreement" with Müller for him to …
Sexual harrassment will be immediate dismissal following investigation in any contract of employment at any level in the UK. So obviously Germany allow this witin contract that CEO etc can do what they want and still walk away with a payout if found to be in breach of contract.
No one will touch him with a barge pole for employment for a few years hence he now has 7.5 mil to live on.
Sexual Harassment is quite complicated though.
What I find interesting about sexual harassment though, is it seems to occur more in companies that overwork their staff that have overbearing authoritarian management practices. If employees are constantly under pressure and working long hours, they're going to be pent up and need to vent somehow...unfortunately this seems to culminate in what some perceive as sexual harassment.
Unfortunately, I can't really see a solution unless corporate wank breaks become a thing.
He touched a womans arse once. You need to get away with more than that to reach the big leagues.
What I find insane is that huge amounts of money was probably thrown at lawyers and court time over a man touching a womans arse. It's probably the case that this situation is so woolly that the cheaper option was to give him 7 million euros and tell him to fuck off.
It's just not that simple. Tactile interaction is normal human communication. One persons groping is another persons friendly gesture...if someone is proven to be a malicious deviant, I fully agree with you...but those people are not as common as you might think...tactile people that are just friendly and trying to be communicative in their own way could get caught in the cross fire and they are far more numerous than actual deviants and if "groping" is defined by the wrong people then that puts a lot of innocent people into the crosshairs and could define them as sexual deviants.
Touching is a valid form of human communication, outright banning it under the banner of "sexual assault" and "professionalism" is just fucking gross. That's not a dystopia I want to live in.
I've worked with thousands of people over my career and I've been interacted with in various different ways, by various different people...some people are just tactile. I'm a straight bloke, so I can't really see things from a female point of view, but I've been touched in various places by various people, including gay men and I never automatically jump to the "sexual assault" conclusion...because most of the time, tactile interaction is not meant to be sexual in context...can tactile interaction make people feel uncomfortable? Absolutely...is feeling uncomfortable with an interaction tantamount to sexual assault...no. No it's not. There has to be persistence and devious or malicious intent behind it.
It might surprise some people...but humans tend to be attracted to some other humans in romantic and affectionate ways, and those humans might want to touch the humans they're attracted to in order to express affectionate or romantic feelings. It's perfectly normal...this is the most common reason that someone might want to touch you...it's also possible for this to be one sided. You might not share the same romantic or affectionate feelings...if it makes you feel uncomfortable and you don't want the advances, you absolutely have a right to tell them to back off and not do it again...usually you'd be polite about it, if you don't want to hurt their feelings...if they persist regardless...now you've found a deviant and you should absolutely report them for unwanted physical advances or if you're being touched in an inappropriate way, in or around erogenous zones, then it's sexual assault.
That serial office cuddler...not a sexual deviant...that person that repeatedly (can't stress this enough but...repeatedly) touches your balls, boobs, bum...whatever...definitely a deviant...if they don't repeat it, probably not. Even as a one off, it's not great behaviour...but it doesn't necessarily warrant ruining the rest of their lives for.
I also cannot stress this enough...one persons discomfort does not define another persons intentions...if you feel uncomfortable with any or all physical interaction, then some personal introspection is required because physical interaction is perfectly normal and should not cause any distress it should also not automatically be defined as inappropriate or sexual in nature...by being black and white in this situation, simply assuming that because someone felt uncomfortable in a given situation that they were, by default, sexually assaulted is dangerous and leads to us treating a perfectly normal form of human expression as some sort of crime.
Right, so you're in a bar, possibly on a work trip, you're wife isn't there...you haven't got your wedding ring on, you forgot to put it back on after a shower...a woman takes a shine to you, you don't necessarily want the attention, you're married or just not out looking for attention, but you're a bit socially awkward and your boundaries aren't clear, she's flirty, she's grabbing your ass, rubbing your thighs, she's all over you...you aren't pushing her off or verbally setting boundaries because you're timid and out of your depth...are you being sexually assaulted here or are you just out of your depth? The woman here doesn't have a clear indicator to suggest you might be uncomfortable...are you being sexually harassed here or are you just to meek, mild and socially inept to control the situation? Are you going to call the police and blow the whistle on this "predator"? Are you a victim?
I don't think you are, I just think you're just ill equipped to deal with the situation and the woman has no idea.
Just because someone isn't socially equipped to deal with a situation, it doesn't make them a victim...nor does it make the other person a predator.
Sweeping statements like yours just create more artificial victims and offenders.
That picture above, is almost exactly how the first contact with my wife went. Except I wasn't married, I was single and I'm not particularly timid, I might have been a bit socially awkward back then, but certainly not timid. She was all over me. I was a lot younger than I am now, and I didn't set any clear boundaries...it didn't even occur to me that I should...I saw the behaviour as nothing more than flirty...sure it was sexually charged, she was grabbing and touching places that might scare you, especially since she wasn't my wife yet, how dare she...and I wasn't necessarily looking for that kind of attention...but I didn't see it as anything other than what it was. I've now been with her for 14 years. We have 3 kids and a house...pretty weird outcome for what you would consider to be entirely malicious and criminal.
In your world, she's a predator...she should be behind bars. Locked up. Ostracised. Cast out...she certainly couldn't have misjudged the situation and just been highly attracted to me, that's impossible, it certainly wasn't anything to do with me being slow to pick up what was going on...it's nothing but sexual harassment...we can't have sexually dominant people, that's abhorrent...kill them with fire.
I agree the current system does not produce fair outcomes, unfortunately socialism and communism has proved even worse. Many capitlaists would say that we don't have true capitalism, favoured bad companies that fail are supported by the state, state support for industries and opposing tariffs, general goverment meddling. Some of it makes sense but much just rewards failure. The problem is humans are corrupt and the most corrupt are attracted to money and power the easiest way, which is not spending decades building a great business. Look at who owns the companies too.
Most corporate board members are not the ones that built the business.
The older I get the more 'socialist' I think I've become. The only thing that is rewarded in our current environment is greed and who you know. Given a few months usually these 'leaders' who leave in these circumstances quietly turn up in another ridiculously lucrative role. I don't know what the answer actually is, but there are a number of things I would love to see.
CEO level pay should be linked to the lowest paid workers. Nobody needs to be getting paid in the millions, and if you want to be paid more, then you have to increase the pay of everyone who works for you.
Make politicians accountable for what they say, lies should be called out and there should be actual penalties for it.
Remove the legal requirement that shareholders comes before everything else. Primary focus should be on the customer, your staff and overall wellbeing of the environment you operate within (including supply chain). There should never be an event where you cut staff so you can still pay dividends.
Universal Basic Income - Get rid of all this us vs them, Stop the oligarchs/corporations being able to blame 'others' for taking all the cookies. (The cost of 'benefits' is far less than the oligarchs/corporations steal from the economy every day, Amazon paid 17m in corporation tax last year .. on 27bn UK turnover).
Increase tax, As of last year I'm on 6 figures, which is crazy to me and I acknowledge that I am very very lucky, but I'm happy to pay more proportionally in tax so that everyone in society is better off. The higher income gets the more the tax rate should increase, i.e. above 500k, make it 90%.
Prevent fiscal drag, tax bands should raise with inflation.
Get rid of all tax loopholes, just make it simple. Stop all Irish/Dutch Sandwich systems.
If you are an ex-HMRC who set the tax rules to then there should be a conflict of interest prevention so they cannot just jump across to advise corporations on how to 'legally reduce tax burden' - No, just pay your damn tax.
Get rid of tax havens, especially the ones that we have direct input to.
If you are making money in this country you should be paying appropriate tax in this country. There shouldn't be ways to hide wealth for the rich. Transparency for everything, no more hiding behind corporations/trusts.
The government should be building significantly more social homes, which are then not sold.
I want education to be free for everyone, especially upcoming generations. They shouldn't be getting saddled with 50k of debt, which for most just becomes another lifetime tax.
I want healthcare/NHS to actually be brought back up to standard, removing all private money grabs (PFI contracts, Massively inflated agency costs).
Yes, we might get a load of rich individuals decide to go live elsewhere, that's fine, long term it will working out much much better for everyone that stays behind. Corporations are not going anywhere, no matter what they say, as they will go wherever they can make money.
Anyway, I think I need a nap after that rant.
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