Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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Speaker 1: Brett Woods says, even if you hate Labor or the Coalition,
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Speaker 1: It's the scandal that has ever every lawyer in Australia
Speaker 1: talking an apparently fake email from a senior executive, smashing
Speaker 1: up colleagues reputations and disclosing salary and performance details. Class
Speaker 1: action law firms Slater and Gordon have called in the
Speaker 1: police and are now trying to calm a furious workforce. Today.
Speaker 1: How the so called ambulance chasers found themselves at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a cliff. Where to from here? The world
Speaker 1: is cold and bleak. In law firms Slater in Gordon's
Speaker 1: latest suite of ads, Unfortunately something's gone wrong institutions, businesses, hospitals,
Speaker 1: the system let ordinary people down. A slip at the supermarket,
Speaker 1: a fall at work, a medical mistake.
Speaker 2: The world can feel like a lonely place.
Speaker 1: Everything seems hopeless.
Speaker 2: Slater and Gordon can help you make a claim through
Speaker 2: your super.
Speaker 1: And then the sun comes out along with the Slater
Speaker 1: and Gordon app and some uplifting music. Are you really
Speaker 1: getting what's fair, not just what's off it? Talk to
Speaker 1: Slater and Gordon and we'll take it from here. In
Speaker 1: Slater and Gordon's own in house promo video, the firm
Speaker 1: proudly sets out its history from representing railway union workers
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties to revolutionizing the legal system in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. More than just knowing the law, we've
Speaker 1: helped change it, providing better outcomes for asbestos and deadly
Speaker 1: silica dust workers and those employed in the growing gig economy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, when a young future Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Julia Gillard worked there, Slater and Gordon introduced a revolutionary concept,
Speaker 1: no win, no fee. That's the idea behind those ads.
Speaker 1: Before this concept, you could only sue for personal injury
Speaker 1: or workers compo if you had enough money to pay
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Slater and Gordon's idea was if they didn't win,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't charge the client at all, and they raked
Speaker 1: in the cash because for many employers, whether they be
Speaker 1: small businesses, giant corporations, or government, it's much cheaper to
Speaker 1: settle a legal claim out of court rather than fight it,
Speaker 1: and the fees could be hefty, up to twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of a client's payout. Slater and Gordon took it
Speaker 1: a step further with class actions, where they'd go looking
Speaker 1: for plaintiffs to take action against wealthy corporations. They took
Speaker 1: on big tobacco companies, mining giants, federal and state governments,
Speaker 1: delivering life changing payouts for individuals like those who'd suffered
Speaker 1: asbestos related diseases at the hands of manufacturer James Hardy.
Speaker 2: Slater and Gordon have been referred to as ambulance chases,
Speaker 2: people who go after claims and chase those claims incredibly
Speaker 2: hard for their client.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's Legal affairs correspondent.
Speaker 2: But they would say that they're all about clients first, right,
Speaker 2: They're all about the little guy, those who have been
Speaker 2: wronged by their employer or by a large corporation. And
Speaker 2: they've had some huge wins when it comes to class
Speaker 2: actions in Australia, things like Manus Island. They're the firm
Speaker 2: that's going after Optus after their data breach, so they
Speaker 2: have had some huge wins and they've got quite a
Speaker 2: good reputation for chasing you know, big workplace or labor
Speaker 2: or class action claims.
Speaker 1: And we're here to talk about the h R nightmare
Speaker 1: engulfing Slater in Gordon.
Speaker 2: It is insanely GC.
Speaker 1: Last Friday morning, Slater and Gordon's staff. We're settling in
Speaker 1: for another day of chasing down bad bosses and standing
Speaker 1: up for the little guy, when an email popped into
Speaker 1: hundreds of inboxes.
Speaker 3: To be blunt, the situation at Slater and Gordon is
Speaker 3: a text bookcase of dysfunction.
Speaker 1: We've used a voice actor to read you the email.
Speaker 1: The email purported to be from Slater and Gordon's Chief
Speaker 1: people officer, that is the head of human Resources, Mari
Speaker 1: Ruiz mathieson handing over to the person who was taking
Speaker 1: over her job, and it seemed to be referring to
Speaker 1: chief executive Dina.
Speaker 3: To Tungi, Dina's primary focus is her own bottom line.
Speaker 3: She's determined to maximize her bonus and is laser focused
Speaker 3: on keeping salaries locked down. She openly admitted her grand
Speaker 3: plan is to cash out and retire with millions in
Speaker 3: a few years.
Speaker 1: The email accused the firm's owner's private equity fund allegro
Speaker 1: of ruining, its culture heads are rolling, and what remains
Speaker 1: is a skeletal crew barely keeping things together.
Speaker 3: The endgame a polished up shell to be sold off
Speaker 3: at the right price. Grim but predictable.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just a Tungi who copped it pasting.
Speaker 1: Senior figures at the firm were described as.
Speaker 3: Ruthlessly ambitious, lazy and unm motivated, senile and needs to retire.
Speaker 3: Morale is abysmal, money is hemorrhaging. Best of luck, you'll
Speaker 3: need it.
Speaker 2: My jaw hit the ground. It was the most shocking
Speaker 2: internal email I think I have ever read. And then,
Speaker 2: on top of that, after all of these criticisms, she
Speaker 2: then attaches or the author then attached a spreadsheet containing
Speaker 2: the salary, performance rating, and bonus information of nine hundred
Speaker 2: and six Slater and Gordon employees. Now that email was
Speaker 2: blind copied to a wide range of Slater and Gordon employees.
Speaker 2: So can you just imagine sitting at your desk at work,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you get this email from
Speaker 2: your colleague calling out every single person at the organization
Speaker 2: divulging this incredibly private information. Plus you can not only
Speaker 2: see your own salary in this spreadsheet, but the salary
Speaker 2: of the people sitting either side of you. So it's
Speaker 2: really really shaken this firm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine Maria action would be between complete
Speaker 1: glee that something so excruciating was happening in public, and
Speaker 1: then rage if my own salary was revealed and finding
Speaker 1: out what, you know, my hopeless colleague.
Speaker 2: Totally I would be going and I'd been knocking on
Speaker 2: my boss's door and saying, Hey, why is old mate
Speaker 2: being paid X? And I'm being paid why? I think
Speaker 2: it's time for a little bit of a pain negotiation,
Speaker 2: which is just the world of pain that Slater and
Speaker 2: Gordon finds themselves in. Now.
Speaker 1: Now, probably the least likely person to have actually sent
Speaker 1: this email is Mari Ruiz Mathison, right, she's denying it totally.
Speaker 2: So this email hit inboxes on Friday morning. By Friday afternoon,
Speaker 2: Slater and Gordon had issued a statement saying that it
Speaker 2: was a hoax and saying that somebody who was not
Speaker 2: Marie Ruiz Matheson had sent the email, and saying both
Speaker 2: the firm and miss Ruiz Matheson intended to report the
Speaker 2: matter to police because a serious breach had been conducted.
Speaker 2: So since then, Marie Ruiz Matheson has also come out
Speaker 2: with her own statement via her lawyers, strenuously denying that
Speaker 2: she sent it, saying that her and her family are
Speaker 2: deeply distressed, and saying that they're planning on taking legal
Speaker 2: action at some point. We don't know what that legal
Speaker 2: action looks like yet, but she is planning on taking
Speaker 2: legal action, and she has lawyered up. So she has
Speaker 2: said that it's absolutely not her. And that's what it
Speaker 2: makes sense, right, because somebody that senior to blow themselves
Speaker 2: up like that before leaving an organization, that's you done,
Speaker 2: that's your reputation absolutely in tatters. But it does lead
Speaker 2: to an incredibly interesting discussion point, which is, well, if
Speaker 2: it wasn't her, then who did send it? The email
Speaker 2: included incredibly high level information about all these different employees,
Speaker 2: about Dina Tutungi, the chief executive, and with all of
Speaker 2: this personal payroll information, so it must have been somebody
Speaker 2: who had access to all that information. On top of that,
Speaker 2: it included a lot of personal details about Mari Ruiz Matheson,
Speaker 2: including you know, the names of her dogs. The email
Speaker 2: was signed off, I'm going to spend time with my ups,
Speaker 2: Ruby and Pearl, things like that, which is incredibly sinister
Speaker 2: when you think about it. So it's left a big
Speaker 2: mystery over this entire saga, which you know, as you
Speaker 2: can imagine, the rumor Millets later in Gordon is just
Speaker 2: churning out all kinds of theories about who sent this email.
Speaker 1: So the spreadsheet that was attached with performance ratings and
Speaker 1: income level salary packages, do we know if that information
Speaker 1: was accurate?
Speaker 2: Slater and Gordon have said that a lot of the
Speaker 2: information included in this email was quite a work of fiction.
Speaker 1: They would say that.
Speaker 2: They would say that, and we know that the spreadsheet
Speaker 2: included salary information for people who haven't worked at the
Speaker 2: firm for a long time. So while Slater and Gordon
Speaker 2: can say that that salary information is disputed and is
Speaker 2: not accurate, it might just mean that it's outdated. But
Speaker 2: they definitely say that it's not one hundred percent accurate.
Speaker 2: But we know that Slater and Gordon employees have looked
Speaker 2: at the information and have said, no, that's my salary,
Speaker 2: So it's got to be accurate to some extent.
Speaker 1: Coming up house later in Gordon is trying to pacify
Speaker 1: the troops. So for employees of Slater in Gordon, I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of whom speak to you, what do they
Speaker 1: do now?
Speaker 2: Gosh? I think it depends on who you talk to.
Speaker 2: Slater and Gordon is in absolute crisis mode at the moment.
Speaker 2: They've set up an HR process specifically for pay negotiations.
Speaker 2: So anybody who feels like they're not earning enough because
Speaker 2: they've seen what their colleagues are earning, there's a special
Speaker 2: HR process that is coming shortly. They're holding emergency staff meetings.
Speaker 2: As we know, Slater and Gordon is incredibly focused on
Speaker 2: their reputation and so they've been very quick to say
Speaker 2: that no client data has been breached as part of
Speaker 2: this so look, it's just crisis mode at the moment,
Speaker 2: and if you're an employee it's later in Gordon, you're
Speaker 2: probably feeling incredibly distressed, incredibly angry, but also probably you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of chatter going on and engaging in
Speaker 2: that too.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ellie, Now famously journalists don't get paid very much,
Speaker 1: but what was your take on seeing those salary numbers?
Speaker 1: What sort of money we're talking about?
Speaker 2: So, Dina Tutungi, according to this disputed spreadsheet, is earning
Speaker 2: six hundred and ninety thousand dollars, which is a lot
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2: I can promise you I'm not earning anywhere near six
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety thousand dollars. But when it comes to
Speaker 2: the CEO of quite a large law firm, it's.
Speaker 1: Probably not that much money.
Speaker 2: But it ranged from that down to the lowest paid
Speaker 2: was a legal assistant on twenty two thousand dollars. Now
Speaker 2: that's surely hopefully somebody who's just you know, working one
Speaker 2: day a week or something like that. But that was
Speaker 2: broadly the range of salaries that was in there. The
Speaker 2: rest of it sort of checked out, you know, lawyers
Speaker 2: on one hundred and fifty thousand dollars that sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: some ranging up to the four hundred thousand dollar mark.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what's later in Gordon's reputation within the legal
Speaker 1: sector as a place to work, so.
Speaker 2: Broadly, it's been known as a place that you want
Speaker 2: to work if you want to work in the class
Speaker 2: action sector. That being said, though, they have been embroiled
Speaker 2: in a few scandals over the past year or so.
Speaker 2: At one point it hit the media that there was
Speaker 2: a huge underpayment scandal that they were underpaying employees over
Speaker 2: a period of twelve years. I think the money that
Speaker 2: at totaled too was three hundred thousand dollars in underpayments.
Speaker 2: As a result of that scandal, the former head of
Speaker 2: HR has also sued the company in the federal court,
Speaker 2: which is still an ongoing legal battle that's between Alicia
Speaker 2: Gleeson and Slater in Gordon. So they do appear to
Speaker 2: be the seeds of scandal that are coming out of
Speaker 2: Slater in Gordon. And then all of a sudden, this
Speaker 2: email leak comes through and now it's a firm in crisis.
Speaker 1: This is a nightmare for any boss to deal with.
Speaker 1: Dinner to Tonguey's probably processing the quite stark criticism of
Speaker 1: her in this email from someone who we don't know.
Speaker 1: But some personal details about her were also revealed in
Speaker 1: the email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, that email included a link to her home,
Speaker 2: this beautiful home that she owns with her husband and
Speaker 2: lives in with her kids, about dinners that she hosted
Speaker 2: out at home incredibly snarkily, you know, referred to them
Speaker 2: as being quite boring. But yeah, this is a huge
Speaker 2: crisis for dinners Tutungi, not just on a professional level
Speaker 2: but a personal.
Speaker 1: Level as well.
Speaker 2: It was heavily, heavily critical of her and you can't
Speaker 2: even imagine what she's going through at the moment.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is the Australians of the Legal Affairs correspondent.
Speaker 1: Speaking of legal affairs, the Antoinette Latoufe versus the ABC
Speaker 1: case is back in the Federal Court on Thursday. You'll
Speaker 1: be able to follow it live by joining US subscribers
Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au