Spared today for the first round

At our place a generous voluntary severance package is on offer. The take up of this will determine whether or not enforced redundancies are needed.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob B:
At our place a generous voluntary severance package is on offer. The take up of this will determine whether or not enforced redundancies are needed.

At our place a meagre voluntary severance package is on offer. The take up of this will determine whether or not enforced redundancies are needed.

My heart goes out to all those who face job insecurity in these difficul times. Even when the tap is not on your shoulder you can not help but worry for other who find themselves jobless.

The blade missed me at the end of last year, I am still working with some colleagues who are working their notice, very sad. Trouble is I suspect there will be another "right sizing" before too long

All I can say is good luck to us all in these tough times.

Barrie

The potential and proper acceptance of shame strikes me as part of the "stick" encouraging us toward honourable behaviour.

Rega 1

Glad your OK at this point. I'll catch up with you - and retrieve my music! :-) when I'm back next.

Cheers

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
Rega 1

Glad your OK at this point. I'll catch up with you - and retrieve my music! :-) when I'm back next.

Cheers

Jim

I will keep it safe as it has been(the music). It would also be nice to sit down, have a pint and catch up on your new job, and life in general.

I agree with you all, it is truly sad to see this collapse and persons jobless, and those responsible will most likely pay no penalties. That is a a true shame.

Job insecurity is becoming more widespread for sure.

But has been there for many years in the lower eschelons, such as what is called the "unskilled" sector.

I speak as someone who has been made redundant twice in the last two years ...

All you can do is pick up the pieces, swallow your pride, and look for another job. The problem is that it is likely to be be less secure and less well paid than the previous one.

After two years of significant stress with this, I have been lucky to find a very good company to work for, which if it fails will indicate an economic collapse on a level no individual could possibly be expected to plan to work round.

There is no shame in being made redundant, but there is a "laudable aspect" to making the best of what is left, even if that involves painful decisions taken without undue complaint, even accepted with phlegmatism.

I suspect that our economy in the UK is undergoing a radical change - not generally realised - where our wealth is going to align itself more closely with certainly the poorer countries of Europe, if not just yet the wider world, and the sooner we get used to the idea that most of us must learn to cut our cloth accordingly, the better for our own contentment in the future.

A lot of what we have taken for granted till now is going to be seen as "what was possible in the good old days" ...

ATB from George

George,

I think you maybe closer to the truth than many would like to admit. This little island has for many centuries batted well above it's size and played a big part in the big game. Perhaps it is time to move down a rung or two and live within our means.

Jono

Dear Jono,

I speak with real experience of the problem which was hitting home more than two years ago for me. I think I have seen it a little sooner than some others - that's all.

But there is a happy future for us all if we cas learn to keep our expectations within the bounds of the possible.

Best from George

George,

The management of expectations is tricky, especially downwards, but we need to do it.

Jono

Dear Jono,

When you look at the beautiful Rolls Royce and Bentley cars of the 1920s, and look at the same company's cars for the 1940s, you see that this management can be done, and it will be done again.

It is never entirely painless, but once accepted, it is liberating in a way that could not be foreseen.

Really if we take the "consumerist message of capitalism" we become trapped like a hamster on his wheel, running very fast and getting no-where. Step off the wheel and any effort at movement produces a real change of disposition!

It is a philosophical thing which those trapped on the hamster wheel will not see till they are either brave enough, or are actually forced by circumstance to jump off the wheel, and become individuals with free choice.

Initially the choices look unpleasant, but once embraced, they suddenly throw a pleasing perspective on what went before, and somehow make waht went before look like some mad rat race trap.

There is a future there, and a happy one, though the initial change may well involve painful changes of attitude to what is necessary for contentment in life.

ATB from George

Thursday i found out my department is being outsourced. We will probably be kept on for the conversion, which is estimated to take two years. that will put me back on the job market at the age of 61.

my employer got 283 million dollars from the tarp fund, despite the fact that they have no bad loans and have remained profitable. so george w. gave them the money to dump my job.

Despite issues in the UK, still better off than many others e.g. Zimbabwe to name an extreme example. And then wait for PIGS to fall out of the Euro...

quote:

Originally posted by JamieWednesday:
Despite issues in the UK, still better off than many others e.g. Zimbabwe to name an extreme example. And then wait for PIGS to fall out of the Euro...

PIGS???

Jono

George,

Indeed, we have already scaled back spending despite no immedaite threat to me.

I hope that you survive this time round and that you can keep driving the Gibb brothers (maurice and robin at audio x in worcester) mad.

Jono

Avole,

You make an interesting point re responsibility to workers as much as shareholders. I fear that when you look at companies like Microsoft which is slashing 5000 jobs after posting a profit of $4.17bn in the last quarter this prioritisation of shareholders has gone too far.

I can't help feeling that the reduction in union power has greatly weakened the job security and respect shown to employees and that is to the detriment of all of us below board level - which lets face it is most of us.

I have every sympathy with companies that are struggling to survive laying off workers, I have no sympathy for the likes of Microsoft.

Jonathan

quote:

Originally posted by avole:
GFFJ et al, sorry, forget the nice English it's really our fault. It will shortly be time to be manning the barricades. Vive la revolution!

Dear Avole,

I am not assigning blame, but merely suggesting that in the face of something many may not have been or may not be able to do anything about, that the best course of action is to get on with life and make the best of the lot any of us have to deal with.

As someone pointed out we are hardly going to decend to the level that has been brought about in Zimbabwe by Mr Mugabe. We should count our blessings even if we find that we are significantly less well off as individuals and as a nation in the UK, and more on the wealth level of Poland or the Czech Republic in a years to come.

In fact it I my experience of these Central European people that they have a general spiritual contentment that has departed from the UK during my lifetime - a lifetime that is just long enough to have seen respect move from considering human qualities of fairness and generosity of spirit as crucial, to regarding success in life as being indicated solely by the ability to demonstrate large earning capacity by spending a good deal and demonstrably consuming ostentaiously. To be poor has become regarded as having failed, and lack all possibility of being respectable.

I suspect the saddest people in this shift will be those who have most to loose in the material sense, and yet ironically it is just those people who have the most to gain spiritually for they start from such a low base ...

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
I suspect the saddest people in this shift will be those who have most to loose in the material sense, and yet ironically it is just those people who have the most to gain spiritually for they start from such a low base ...
ATB from George

so you can judge another by their possessions?
and i thought that was what you had complaint with ...

Dear Mike,

Not my point at all. I speak as someone judged by my possesions!

I speak as someone from a familly with some quite dispiritingly nasty people in it, who regard signs of wealth as the only significant signs of success. You may imagine that these materialist were themselves rather successful in the materialist sense ...

Unfortunately my familly do not seem to be such an unusual type in modern Britain!

I take the old maxin, judge not lest ye be judged, as quite a sensible starting point!

I do know that in my case working through these things has made me a more contented person, and I know others who have found a similar experience in changing circumstances. I hope I am a more generous spirited person than I might have been had I stuck to the tenets that my relations mostly hold dear.

If you take any sense of me judging other people out of what you quoted, I still think it makes sense ...

ATB from George

Avole,

I think shareholders have gotten screwed, too. Top management in most companies takes care of itself and no one else.

Regards.

PhilB

GFFJ,

I concur entirely with what you say and regret certain elements of my family are equally materially focussed, selfish and insensitive with it.

I was brought up by loving 'working class' parents in a typical 3 bed semi, but they had a rather anti-materialist philosophy which believed the best things in life are free. I must admit I have wrestled with this, particularly when I worked in IT and earned rather more than I do now. As you sit in First Class sipping champagne on your way to a 4 or 5 star resort in Mexico of course you're happy, of course it's nice and I have always struggled to reconcile that with my upbringing.

My own financial crisis was self inflicted - I changed career, spent two years as a student and £65 000 on a course, then spent ages trying to get a job in my chosen field only to get one earning roughly half of my old salary. It forced me to return to thinking more like my parents and that is a good thing I think. We will be on bicycles today exploring the countryside of Sussex - beats Mexico anyday and no jet-lag.

Jonathan

Jonathan

quote:

I have every sympathy with companies that are struggling to survive laying off workers, I have no sympathy for the likes of Microsoft.

I agree that on the face of it $4+Bn is a big profit...but...directors of comapnies like Microsoft have to look years ahead and position their companies accordingly...what would seem to be a small profit erosion now if left unchecked could mean the end of the company in xx years, then what would have become of the other 100,000 employees of Microsoft? I'm not defending their actions as I have no insight into their accounts and what KPI's they use to monitor performance and trends in their business but like it or not, we live in a capitalist society where directors have a responsibility to the shreholders - that's what has driven our wealth creation after all.

As for the Unions....do you really want to go back to the &0's and the likes of Scargill et al? The man who drove around in his Jaguar while the miners were picketing and their familes scrimping to get by? Was he really any differnt to a "fat cat" businessman.

Cheers

Jim

An interesting article on Robert Pestons blog titled "The new capitalism" (pdf download on the right hand side of the page)-may go some way to showing the new world alignment we are looking forward to-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Barry:
Avole,

I think shareholders have gotten screwed, too. Top management in most companies takes care of itself and no one else.

Regards.

PhilB

You are right in a way and here is what was told to me.

Friday after the cuts we all headed to the pub after work to celebrate those who retired and took the "voulunyary separation plan", and also tried to make sense of the those who were "involuntary laid off". Those involuntary folks will get a package of some sort, but not as nice as the voluntary one.

One person some summed it up when he said "it comes down to earnings per share" If we are slightly profitable and stay afloat and keep workers on so when the economy picks up we can ramp up production, that is not good enough. We need to profit / earn so much per share or the stock holdrs sell and the companies net worth drops.

The chairman CEO for Caterpillar is a PHd economist, not a PHd manufacturing engineer. He will cut again until the profit per share is where they announced to wall steet it will be this year.

Not my explanation, some one elses, but it makes sense I suppose.

rega1