Which matters more: making money or following the law? You can do both

I’m not against employees getting the best deal possible from their employer if they find that relations have broken down. For both parties in a grievance dispute, a quick and mutually confidential agreement is often the least distressing option and can protect both the reputation of the employer and employee. Even the most strident employee may want to avoid tribunal proceedings, because it could make them look like a troublemaker to future employers.

The problem is that this perfectly reasonable, mutually sensible option falls apart when it isn’t a one-off employee dispute – and it concerns serious allegations of sexual and racial discrimination. When settlement after settlement can be drawn up for employee after employee, nondisclosure agreements (NDAS) stop being about mutual reputation and start to be about hiding bad, illegal and abusive practices. If I were the chair of Philip Green’s retail empire, aside from perhaps making a pitch for clothes in Topshop for the larger woman, I’d have a couple of questions to ask about the settlement agreements one of his companies, Arcadia, was signing in which allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse had been made against Green.

Hey, I’d go one further, I’d have an investigation done. If I found that there had been groping, I’d work with those involved, take complaints to the police and my top priority would be making sure all the proper safeguards were in place to protect the staff under my charge.

Perhaps this is why, unlike Karren Brady, I would never get the job.

The allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse against Green are just allegations, I hear you cry. Yes, that is true, but the trouble is that the people making these allegations are unable to speak out about them because they have been silenced by NDAS.

Also, as more allegations surface, the picture is of a company where bullying and intimidation are part of the culture and serious allegations are brushed aside as “horseplay”. If there is no smoke without fire, what we have burning at Arcadia is a huge bonfire with massive rockets shooting out of it, bursting into gold and red plumes above our heads.

Brady is the chair of Arcadia’s parent company, Taveta Investments. She was very vocal about the Harvey Weinstein allegations, she stood firmly on the side of the Metoo movement

‘Did she set up an inquiry into what was going on at Arcadia? Did she help those making the complaints?’

and called for a clean-up. Good for her, but she now has to prove what she did in her own backyard was correct or she will, at the very least, open herself up to charges of hypocrisy.

Did she set up an inquiry into what was going on at Arcadia? Did she seek to help those making the complaints? Has she called for an overhaul of the culture which has made the company she oversees reach again and again for the “make this go away” chequebook?

Brady should now distance herself from Green, who is still threatening to sue current and ex-employees who speak out, and she should use her position to ask them to come forward without fear of reprisals. She should want to hear them in order to know how to make it better.

I don’t buy the argument that Brady should do this because she is a woman. If the chair was a bloke I would say the same. Brady should do this because it’s the right thing to do.

And as for the NDAS themselves, we have got to implement a system that means companies have to show on their accounts how many complaints of harassment and abuse have been made and how many settlements they have made.

Furthermore, they must prove how they are acting to change this in their organisation and, if they don’t, these individuals should be struck off from being able to be on company boards or owning companies in the UK.

We have to decide which matters more: making money or following the law. Someone should tell Green you can do both.