The public gets the Associated Press story at the top. Behind the scenes is a chaotic situation (video below). Much stems from the fact that the unions at the BMW plant had apparently had as part of the labor contract “weeks notice” (or three weeks according to some reports) before a layoff. This was ignored and nothing was done about it. The soft and fuzzy news that the public gets is masking a growing resentment by a large portion of the public. Don’t be surprised when all hell breaks loose someplace or other. The only reason you’d be surprised, is because you are not getting good and detailed analysis. It’s just soft and bland. Pathetic actually.
Father-of-one Roger Freitis, 26, from Cowley, said: “It’s not just the job cuts, it’s how they did it which is disgraceful.
“An hour before the end of our shift they round us up and say we are going.
“No redundancy, nothing, just an hour’s notice.
“We’ve been here all weekend asking what is going to happen and they say nothing.
Then there is this:
Sad
I think now is the time for dvorak.org/blog to start a poll on where we should put the socialist once they’re rounded up.
My vote is Ft. Richardson, which if you read the kook websites is where the “mentally deranged” would be sent in the case of national emergence.
It’s near Palin’s house, so that makes sense.
I loved the last link to Dame Stella Rimington and the quote “Dame Stella accused ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists by “frightening people” in order to be able to pass new laws.”
It’s good to see these people FINALLY starting to wake up. But where was she when this was coming about? For this statement I shall dub her Dame Captain Obvious.
An hour sounds good to me at lest you can go collect your stuff. I got laid off from my job at McFarlane on monday Dec. 13th I got called into a room and away I went. I wasnt even aloud to go back to my desk and collect my things. I had to comeback at a latter time to get my stuff. This is typical here in the U.S.
#24 Nice timing, just before Christmas. I hope you found work.
Maybe the Germans demanded that BMW stop outsourcing. If outsourcing = evil then BMW has grown a conscience. We should applaud them. Right?
While it does suck for those workers, at least they got an hours notice. At the place where I worked during the 2000-2001 telecommunications crash they held a meeting 15 minutes after announcing it and told us they were going to start laying people off. We were then told to go back to our desk and they would let us know who was laid off. The security guard walked around with somebody from HR and stood behind you and watched you clean out your desk if you were laid off. Talk about a poor way to treat your people. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar tomorrow when our quarterly meeting is being held.
Employer civility exited once the unions were co-opted and corrupted.
I had the unhappy task of working as a security guard at ITT Telecom in Raliegh, NC in the mid 1980′s. ITT came to the realization they were not going to be able to adapt their European digital network switch to the US market and had mass layoffs of around 2000 out of 3000 (mostly engineers, sales, marketing and support staff). Around 10 am they had all employees leave the buildings and on the way out the Human Resources staff gave everyone their own manila envelope telling them if they had a job to return to the following monday. An HR rep would individually escort laid off employees back to their desk/office to clean it out over the ensuing days.
Out of all those employees, only 2 or 3 caused a commotion. And more than half the HR reps worked knowing they were also being sacked. Security was then upped with all guards working 12 hr shifts 7 days a week for about a month. About the biggest incident during this time was the discovery that Hal Miller’s (prez of ITT Telecom) yard was toilet papered by one of the roving security guards, keeping a check on 3 or 4 houses of the top management.
To make a long story longer, ITT Telecom was merged/bought by Alcatel, leading to 3 more rounds of layoffs in about 3 years. Some employees got laid off 3 times, others were laid off to return the next week as long term temps, and others went into business for themselves providing ITT/Alcatel with the services the company no longer wanted in house. I vividly remember that the office relocation and phone/data line people made out very well in the chaos.
About 16 years ago, the original Oxford Mini plant was shut down and everyone lost their jobs. BMW went into Oxford, bought the plant, retooled it at enormous expense and rehired everyone who originally lost their jobs. For about 15 years, MINI has been probably one of the most successful cars ever built and sold around the world and BMW as well as their workers did well financially. I guess no one saved any of those 15 years of income for a rainy day?
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Mini. Happy anniversary. I would love to go to the Mini United event in May but it will be hard to do now.