Working and playing

[ailbhe]

Dinner and a movie

Yesterday evening, Rob and I went out to dinner and the cinema. We ate canneloni and tortellini at Pizza Hut, which was dreadful. The portions were small, it was expensive, and the food was nasty. We watched Rabbit-Proof Fence, which was good and made me cry (they took her away from her mother. Twice. And then, after she walked 1200 miles home, twice, they took her baby away. No wonder I cried).

Work

Today I had to start work half an hour early, which was fine because I had a bath last night and washed my hair, so it took almost no time to get ready to leave the house. I may get to leave an hour early, since I have had one lunch break this week - no, two - and only left work on time one day.

Big scary Team Leader job interview

The interviews for the Team Leader position are supposed to be next week, probably on Friday, and I think three of us have applied for it. I strongly suspect that they have decided who will get the job already. I hope it's not me, and I hope it's me, for different reasons.

• It pays more.
• It means dealing directly with upper management more.
• I would be good at it.
• It will make at least one member of the team resent me greatly.
• I will feel comfortable that the job is being done well.
• I will feel guilty for not doing it perfectly.

So them's my reasons.

It would be a disaster if they fill it from outside the team. We can't take much more in the way of "Being managed by people who really don't know what they're doing or how it all works".

Firemen on strike

Yesterday I passed the striking firemen twice, and today once. It's really upsetting me. I find the thought of them having to go on strike frightening - both "Argh, how can we possibly appreciate such a vital service so little? They don't even earn a living wage!" and "Argh, how can they go on strike? They're a vital service!" and "Argh! How dare people say that they are deliberately endangering lives solely to line their own pockets when it's obvious that striking is a last last final last resort and they didn't want to do it?"

Hearing them talk about how they feel, being on strike and trying to force themselves not to answer calls, and answering calls anyway and then being blamed when people die even though they answered the call and brought equipment and oxygen and tried really hard, is making me angry and unhappy.

And every fire is national news, no matter who is supposed to deal with it. The retained firemen deal with a lot of things anyway, and they're not on strike, so when something in their area comes up off they go. But it's still national news that the fire brigade, who wouldn't have dealt with it anyway, didn't deal with it.

And both nights they've broken strike to attempt to save lives anyway.

And still no-one wants to pay them £8.50 and hour, considerably less than many people I know are paid for comfy office jobs with no night work or shift work, and no risk to life or limb anyway even if they are on call occasionally. And the people I know with comparatively comfy jobs seem, to me, to deserve the wages they are on, mostly.

Lives are valued lower than the internet, I guess.

Comments

[redbird]

£8.50 an hour? I'd assumed they were already getting a decent wage--ours do. How many of those people bitching about it would risk their own lives for twice that?

[lovingboth]

Yep, my father was a sub-officer in the fire brigade for many years and I remember the 70s strike very well. They got a very good deal at the end of it but what's happened is that wages for manual workers (which is what they've been tied to) simply haven't kept up with everyone else or the cost of living.

It's extremely sad that its come to another strike to do something about that. Especially as the job keeps getting more complicated - someone should drop the textbooks they have to know all the contents of in order to do it on a few heads.

Firemen

[artela.livejournal.com]

All of what you said nowithstanding...

1) If we pay them more then we also have to pay the other vital services more (ie. Nurses, Policemen)
2) There are many more people applying to be firemen than there are jobs available - it is an employers market
3) They have at least been getting payrises - there are many people who, in the current economic climate, have not had a raise since mid-2001 and who have no hope of getting a raise until the end of 2003 at the earliest. They also have jobs they are pretty much guaranteed to keep if they want them - there are many who are being laid off in some private sectors at the moment who are having a great deal of difficulty getting more work despite being very highly trained individuals
4) Having been offered a negotiating position I have no sympathy for a union which decides it will strike anyway without taking the time out to look *properly* at what has been proposed and without coming back with a proper response (ie. better than "don't like it" *fx:stamp foot*)

Re: Firemen

[lovingboth]

Compare the pay rates of police and firemen between 1978 and now.

I understand that while there may be 40 applicants for each post, only one in twenty-five or so is actually suitable, making it less than two 'real' applicants (ie less than the number seeking to be MPs or almost any other job you care to name...)

n% of not much is... not very much.

If it's true that the employers were talking about 16% this summer before central government intervention, expecting them to take 4ish% now, and no more than 7% next year is stupid.

Re: Firemen

[artela.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong - I am sympathetic to their cause - but they lost most of that sympathy the minute that their leader (who you can bet is still getting paid while his workers are striking) stopped being willing to listen to the other side. x% of not a lot is still better than 0% of anything. People shouldn't be talking %s anyways - it's a stupid way to work.

My own solution - go back to the days when all public service personnel were expected to live in tied accomodation close to their place of work - gets rid of the biggest problem facing them right now (which is how to pay those in London and the South East enough).

Re: Firemen

[ailbhe]

Tied accomodation - does this mean that the service which employs them is under obligation to offer them reasonably priced accomodation within n minutes' commute of where they work? That would make me willing to believe that a lower wage was halfway reasonable.

A.

Re: Firemen

[artela.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what it means. And it used to be the case that for certain professions it was supplied (but that hasn't been the case for very may years now - although we do still have policehouses around here).