Monday, January 17, 2005

The Stand

I mentioned ‘Fuzzy Face’ in an earlier blog, he’s the new boss type person at the company where I work, he’s a Londoner based in our Leeds office that has seemingly risen from nowhere. After a period of so called consultation with the work force he is now in the process of implementing new changes, so called changes for the better.

I’ve known boss people in my time but none so as insidious and out of touch as this bloke. He’s about to try to strip us of our existing contracts and rights with a new contract that promises much and yet delivers very little. The new contract has extra money, holidays, pension scheme and other sundry items but when you actually read it carefully you see your rights being stripped away.

‘The new boss man giveth but he taketh away’

Fuzzy face wants a malleable, eager and in his words ‘flexible’ work force, one that he can basically do whatever he wants with. Gone are the contracted hours we signed for and built our lives around, gone is the tried and trusted salary package, broken up into segments and bonus’s that can easily be took away as easily as they have been added. We don’t have to sign the new contract but if we don’t then we can forget pay rises, fair treatment and any prospects at all.

So what is happening, what are people doing?

Some are leaving, some that haven’t been here that long and have similar contracts are signing in the hope to make a career here and impress and a few such as myself are making a stand. Disenchantment is widespread across the office, supervisors are not happy too as they see a perfectly good system replaced by something that really isn’t needed. I could go on and on, about peoples, about the contract, about perspectives and lastly about my fears and hopes.

The New Year comes and with it new challenges, nobody said life was easy.

Ironically I watched Stephen Kings ‘The Stand’ this weekend, a five or six hour epic about good versus evil, a few good men making a stand for what is right and just, forget the religious content of the film, its about people standing for what’s right and just. It’s a movie that always makes me feel good, a movie that explores characters like only Stephen King can, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. The only difference is the bad guy in the movie ‘Randall Flagg’ is far more charismatic than our bad guy boss.

So now I have to make a stand with a few others, I’m not sure what the outcome will be but good or bad I know life goes on. Then looming up ahead is another trial, murky at the moment but its shadowy images become clearer by the day, I’m talking about when I have to make my stand in court next month and face the idiots that assaulted me. I have to come face to face with them, people I cannot recall or neither want to.

To quote the film and the bible;

‘Though I walk in the valley of darkness, I shall fear no evil’

I’m not overly religious, I’m not brainy or super humanly brave but I do know one thing,

It’s time to make a stand

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