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As you may remember for years my relatively independent company branch has been struggling through restructurings which invariably meant cutbacks. Lack of investment, above all into acquiring certain certifications which our extra-company customers increasingly demand, put us in the red, which was the justification for the latest and most brutal restructuring back in July. But we didn't give up: that exhausting job for a big customer in November put us in the breakeven zone for this year, already agreed further jobs for the same customer alone would have guaranteed profitability next year. What's more, that visit of the German-speakers I wrote about was for a review, one that at last resulted in an international certification.
However, apparently, none of that counted, and we are to be dissolved no matter what. And it all went in the most curious fashion:
So that's how it is. So far the only official information we received (today) is that everyone is to attend a meeting on the first workday in January. If management will do it like in July, we'll be told to not return for work from the next day. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Sadly, the pattern doesn't quite hold for the manager who killed us: this guy climbed the hierarchy from a normal railway job and has technical knowledge. But as manager he is apparently an unscrupulous careerist, and he did worse than killing us: he is also abolishing the company branch he himself came from, firing several technical experts in the process. (He tried to delegate the latter: the branch boss was forced into retirement, and his successor was told that his sole job will be the firings. That successor told thanks but no thanks and returned to his old job.) These firings are even more senseless than ours. The more charitable version is that this is to please the CEO (an accountant...) who thinks the railway can be operated without experts who step in when something goes wrong.
Also, this manager is no change to his non-railway "imported" peers in heading a bureaucracy at the headquarters that would be a much better target for cost-saving measures. I mean lots of people in jobs like purchasing, accounting, controlling, compliance or legal matters who are busy running through the corridors with files but need four months to sign off a 1000-word contract that is mostly copy-and-paste standard text. A colleague of us who was fired in July and accepted an intra-company new job offer there got the enmity of the new colleagues for doing what they do in half a year in two weeks. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Why you are not on some high EU transport planning committee drawing up more intelligent solutions is beyond me.
Or do a full-on train geek blog? 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Best wishes for the uncertain future, DoDo. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
That's shitty news, DoDo. I hope you can find something that's commensurate with your very considerable abilities - at least, something that pays you properly and doesn't poison your life!
I was working on a positive attitude the last weeks :-]
No chance of spinning it of as a workers owned company? You seem to have customers outside (since you reached break-even without paid intra-company work) and expertise they will have to pay for down the line. Well maybe capital requirements prevents it, just wanted to throw it out there. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
For now I agree with my boss that we should first wait and see what specific employment offer that Ltd. boss will make towards us. He has no men with the expertise of any of our remaining team (he can't use our equipment or analyse data or write reports to customers without us), so we are not entirely powerless to make demands (like no major wage cuts). Add to that that there would be one definite positive change: this guy is willing to approve significant investment and see a return in as long as two years (of course financed by his overcharging of the state company who wouldn't invest in us directly, but whatever). But who knows, he may still opt to kick us out of his room if we don't accept a 50% wage cut. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
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