Thank you very much
(Edits: pedantic 3am formatting)
I can't get into the specifics of what happened because the question of legal action looms given how much this has spiralled out of control with substantially influential entities absolutely making stuff up in threatening the livelihoods of those who rely on Delta for income, but I'm not one to ignore an invitation to comment when it's made in good faith - even though I'm aware that I'm going to be crucified regardless of what I say.
This post isn't for myself (in fact I only risk complicating matters for myself further) - but for Delta's current, amazing, incredible employees as the current slandering affects everyone I work with. My colleagues are innocent and are unfairly affected by the blatant hate that's occurring, even if it's not obvious to you that they are. They are being harassed, heckled and contacted by randoms because of what's happened. Please stop going after my employees - I'm your target if you have grievances to air. We aren't large enough of a company for slick PR tricks to work so we can only rely on sincerity.
I've accepted that I have no control over those who've already committed to animosity and hatred without actually knowing what happened; so
the below points are for those who think there could even be a slight chance of another side to this story existing. Everything I say from here on in relies only on your judgement and very basic reasoning - I'm going to make literally no comment about anything that did or did not happen.
1. Imagine you own a service-based business with employees. You'll know that your employees are your livelihood. Your employees ARE your business. You come up with a nice name and fancy logo but your employees are the beginning and end of what gives it meaning. They can make or break you depending on how happy they are with how you treat them. They will tell other people about you if they believe they've been mistreated. These are basic facts that you already understand.
Now, try and come up with the most valid reason you can as to why despite all of this, you'd allow a certain group of three employees to resign following a pay dispute that you could've resolved rather easily (the amounts demanded were never going to bankrupt you).
Let's call this Reason X.
2. Imagine now that the same business happens to be a tutoring company for students sitting their HSC for a very confusing and difficult subject, and that parents in the community have made large sacrifices in trusting you to help their child. How happy these parents and students are determines whether you have enough money to pay rent for another month because otherwise, all losses come out of your pocket.
You know that you're not the one teaching your students - your employees are, and unless they're happy, students won't be. You went to a public school, don't have rich parents and are on the hook for a five year lease and have substantially risked your main career on a business that could screw up and potentially destroy your financial future. Sure, you're trying to make money and it's all on you if you screw it up. You accept this is completely fair but for better or worse, you've decided to try anyway.
You find that your business actually teaches English which requires far more student support where teachers are paid much, much higher because it's so much harder to teach and there are just no good English tutors out there. You need to have 25+ courses written for each text for a new syllabus. In addition to classes that are incredibly difficult to teach, you provide unlimited essay marking and individual tutorials for all of your students because you aspire to offer the best product out there regardless of how hard it will be. You have no choice but to charge more money for your service as a result, but now you have no choice but to make large promises and can only survive another day if these are met, because people aren't stupid to pay a higher price for nothing and you'd be screwed if you made promises you couldn't keep.
This makes you so much more reliant on your employees to understand your vision and meet these higher expectations.
If Reason X for allowing employees to leave just because of an easily solved pay dispute no longer makes sense for a business of this description, try and replace it with an alternative if you can.
3. Imagine now that as the owner of the same business, you are the dumbest and objectively the least academically qualified of all the tutors you employ (this is legitimately true). Your employees are highly successful, intelligent people who are literally the best society has to offer. This without doubt also applies to the three employees who left. Sure, you're their 'employer' but they are highly competent people who are aware of their rights and their protections. The age difference between you and the youngest employee is well below ten years. You have no business partners to help you. Other tutoring companies hate you. School English faculties hate you. Random people who own meme pages on Facebook you've never met hate you. Writers from student newspapers which you've always respected hate you. They lie that they contacted you for comment and even mention your profession and place of employment on the basis of unfounded allegations because they want to hurt you in every possible way they can sitting behind a keyboard.
Given all of this, even if you were evil and wanted to exploit your employees you have enough sense to know that your employees are too smart to put up with an inch of it. They know how much they are worth and are acutely aware that they have options. Even if you tried to do something dodgy and they didn't want to fight you, you are perfectly aware that they could easily tutor privately in a second or just leave to work at another tutoring company down the road. You are highly, highly dependent on these people agreeing to continually work with you.
If Reason X for allowing employees to leave just because of an easily solved pay dispute no longer makes sense for a business of this description, try and replace it with an alternative if you can.
4. Imagine now that the same business
is tiny in size (<15 employees total) relative to the work that it does. Despite this, you make it work because each person plays a very important role in your business and you believe you work well with everyone you employ. But you know,
and they know, that unlike a large, corporate firm, you don't have many employees you can lose before you're in serious trouble. Your business stopped taking new Year 12 students in March of 2019 due to not having enough tutors. You don't want to relax your hiring criteria because students have come to expect a certain standard given the complexity of the subject you teach. You need the small amount of people that you have to remain happy and stay working with you. You understand that there is literally nothing more important than this. You know that doing the wrong thing could easily risk everyone leaving en-masse and destroying you.
If Reason X for allowing employees to leave just because of an easily solved pay dispute no longer makes sense for a business of this description, try and replace it with an alternative if you can.
Solving for X
I'm really sorry for the anticlimax. Very broadly, you can think of two solutions for Reason X given all of the above. It's an anticlimax because both reasons are incredibly simple. Everyone is assuming the second reason below, but I know at some point the first would've popped into your head if you have absolutely any idea about how the world really works. Here's the key part again: absolutely nothing within this post requires belief of any particular version of recent events on anyone's side; it involves only a simple process of reasoning requiring a very basic level of intelligence.
The first possible solution for why you'd allow unhappy employees to leave following a simple pay dispute [Reason X] is that they were incredibly poor team players who systematically avoided work, discouraged students from booking lessons, never checked up on students as to how they were doing for months at a time (despite being paid per month per student), were barely ever present at the centre and were identified as risking the reputation of not just your entire product, but those of your remaining employees.
You would've let any other reason slide but your hands are tied because you'd rather risk your revenue than compromise the quality of the help you give to your students. You were hoping to speak with them about improving going forward, but they literally refuse to meet you and write a letter threatening to resign. You've never experienced any form of pay dispute before, believe you've done the right thing, and very importantly,
are applying the same policies equally to everyone you employ, the vast majority of whom have raised no concerns. Two of the three are smart enough not to make public comments about this. Most unfortunately, one is not and accuses you of everything you're not on a meme page which goes viral and puts your entire livelihood at risk.
The second possible solution for why you'd allow unhappy employees to leave due to a simple pay dispute [Reason X] - despite knowing all of the very basic facts mentioned in this post - is because you're just that stupid and you thought scamming people for a few thousand dollars was worth risking the entire business that you'd built from the ground up and had single-handedly sacrificed everything and worked your heart out for. Your call.
