A Christmas Council
Featuring the ghosts of restructuring, consultation and budget deficits.
It’s that time of the year again. The advent calendar doors are opening one by one. It’s dark when you leave for work and even darker when you return home. There’s a nip in the air and the TV is bloated with soft focus adverts desperately trying to ignite a festive warmth into the frozen and barren wasteland of our wallets and purses.
It is also that time of the year when the 3 month notice deadline approaches for consultations about public sector restructures which must be decided soon in order to avoid going into the red before financial year end. All public sector organisations and, especially our dear local authorities must be feeling the pain at the moment. Thank you government!
Considerations such as: Do we really need a library? Ooh that manager’s retiring, who can we dump their workload on? What non-statutory services can we get rid of? Never mind if they’re any good, ARE THEY CHEAPER?
Restructures are not always Bad Things but when *Mary received the invitation to the meeting and was told that she could bring her union representative with her, she felt a sense of gut-churning and impending dread. She’d seen it happen to others, many times; it was always on the way. Like the grim fecking reaper.
Who will be OK? Who won’t be? Who faces a bleak Christmas unsure of whether they will still be employed in 3 months’ time?
Who is going to be at the mercy of the dreaded ‘regrade’? In layman’s terms, this is when a person is being paid a certain salary to do a certain job and – with an ever reducing budget to work with – a question mark now hangs over them; can the powers-that-be get away with paying them less? The job they do and have done for so many years is about to be slid under a microscope and analysed for value. It’s hard not to take this personally.
Suddenly, no-one is to be trusted because who knows who knows what? Let me clarify. There are those senior managers who know what your fate is, but can’t tell you. There are middle managers who don’t know anything but you can’t be sure they don’t know. There are very senior people who don’t know you at all – you were just a row on that spreadsheet that they signed off on.
Who will be throwing who under a bus to save their own skin? Be wary of the manager who promises they have your back, but then retreats behind a do-not-disturb sign and takes cover behind that wall of competence and integrity known as H R.
A date was set for a point in the future when all would be revealed…but
Until then, *Mary and her colleagues suffered. What ifs, rampant speculation, growing anxiety, sleepless nights, inability to concentrate. Tears! Wildly veering from reassuring self-talk, based on everything *Mary had ever been told, to clinging on to her colleague’s hands in the toilets while they sobbed that they couldn’t go on any more.
And then *Mary recalls that on the way to the kitchen the other day, a senior manager avoided eye contact and this now means that her fate is sealed and they refused to acknowledge her because she’s already gone as far as they are concerned and, oh shit, what about the mortgage?
If you have even a minor team leader role, the worry is amplified and multiplied and squared for every single one of your colleagues and Goddamnit just put them out of their misery, please.
And then *Mary caught her reflection in the mirror and realised that while she had been grappling with these worries she vandalised her own head and transformed her appearance into that of a somewhat unhinged-looking, perimenopausal Marc Bolan tribute act complete with smeared Kiss-style eye make up.
She’s losing it. Time to pull herselves together, think positive thoughts. Don’t think about that very senior person who not even 2 weeks ago stood before her and her colleagues with a microphone delivering a speech in which he profusely thanked each and every one of them for their vital service.
Would he know *Mary if he fell over her in the street? Would he buggery. Does he care if she’s about to be evicted from her job and her livelihood? Does he fudge. Does he realise how incredibly frustrating it is to see a budget being spent on motivational speakers, leadership gurus and ‘inspirational murals’ being painted onto the office walls while hardworking people face losing the jobs they love?
It would seem the irony is lost on him. God bless Corporate Leadership Teams. Thou art living on a different planet but tha’ must be very well paid lest you all do one to the private sector.
They will do their very best to wear sympathetic expressions (as they have been meticulously trained to do by leadership gurus) and remind you again of the budget constraints that have been drip fed into every friendly email update issued since 2010. And they will explain that the terrible ideas that *Mary is about to be faux-consulted on are absolutely necessary and for the greater good of mankind.
*Mary and her colleagues’ opinions will be welcomed, but not acted upon, because the spreadsheets have already been finalised and the numbers now add up. If she’s not happy with her new situation she can either (a) take solace in the fact that she still has a job (if she indeed does) or (b) find another position elsewhere. ‘B’ is preferable because it makes a start on next year’s savings.
So, there we go. It’s that time of the year. Draw the curtains, make a hot cup of cocoa, think about the Christmas you have yet to pay for and spare a thought for those well-paid senior managers who have had to make ‘difficult decisions’, which won’t affect them in the slightest.
Bah. Humbug.
