Stan Herschel, RMT, retired
A neighbour of mine is married with two children and lives in a nice council house. His wife holds down three jobs.
Both have paid National Insurance and tax since they left school and started work. He has been made redundant three times since I first met him, once just two weeks before Christmas.
He has been with his current company for 11 months and in his words, “it’s canny money”.
Bright future?
At his interview he was advised that the company was a family run business, that orders were good and the future looked bright. The business employs about 120 people over two shifts.
About a month ago his shift was called into the canteen for “an address” from the Managing Director (MD). There they are, sitting in the canteen, when a giant TV monitor is wheeled in.
Up pops Mr Big, via Skype, to inform the staff that he was going to need 60 redundancies over the two shifts. But because he was such a good bloke he had whittled that down to 30.
The redundancies would be by selection and probably ‘last in first out’ unless you’re crap at your job or your attendance is poor, in which case your days are numbered.
All in it together?
Some may say ‘what’s new’ and the answer is probably nothing. But the clue is in ‘Skype’. The MD was speaking from his holiday home in Barbados!
Osborne, Cameron and Labour MPs may say: “we are all in this together.” It does not matter how you dress it up, this story shows it’s us and them.
