The Judge RANTS!
Date: 09/03/10
Struck
On strike yesterday and today, in protest against our employer unilaterally tearing up our redundancy agreement, just totally coincidentally (of course!) before they start on their bold work of slashing thousands of jobs from the public sector in order to be able to afford to buy off the crooks in the financial services sector.
I took the opportunity yesterday - the weather being fine, if chilly - to go for a little walk around the village. Today, I had shopping to do and, as this took me past the office, I thought I'd call on my comrades on the picket line. I was glad to hear that support has been very solid, although you wouldn't get that impression from the statements made by Tessa Jowell, the responsible (sic) minister. You know, the one who stood by her crook of a husband until he became a political embarassment and potential hindrance to Her Glorious Career.
The media coverage has, on the whole, been predictable, with official statements being treated as hard fact. The comments on the news websites have been the usual cascade of diarrhoea as well, especially on the site which the BBC calls Have Your Say, but which really should be called Hurl Your Bile. Some things never change, because the same thing happened the last time we were out (see here for an analysis).
There are underlying issues beyond the redundancy scheme, though. Management in the Depratment seems in the last couple of years to have morphed into a self-regarding clique of amateur Samurai for whom staff relations, logic, even humanity itself must forever take a back seat to arbitrary and ever more restrictive 'guidelines' imposed from the top and - I'm sad to say - put into effect with ill-disguised glee by many managers at the 'sharp end' whose own experience should have made them wise to what is happening; even they seem to have 'gone native'.
(I'm in dispute over the effects of some of these at present, and hope to be able to make a public statement here about this in due course).
It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that in a recent survey carried out across no fewer than ninety-six public sector organisations, the Depratment was in the bottom ten in all bar a handful of the fifty-six categories, and was absolutely last when it came to recommending it as a place to work and being proud to work in it.
(I wish I could post the full results here, but I'm not sure of the status of the documents in question yet. Previous staff survey results have been published on the Depratment's public website but - for some unfathomable reason - not this one. Watch This Space).
In the light of this, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the Treasury Select Committee has just published a report stating that it is "deeply concerned about employee engagement....and its effect on performance". Nor that our Chief Executive should try to bullshit her way out of it by denying that staff morale was poor (she previously described the survey results I've mentioned as "encouraging"). Nor, indeed, that a spokesbeing for the Depratment should say something like, "HMRC senior managers are addressing the causes of low morale". Short of resigning en masse, I can't see how they could be of any help at all, since - like a fish - the rot starts at the head.
The level of disillusionment of staff who have, in many cases, given their whole working lives to the Civil Service is now so deep, so palpable, that nothing other than the removal of the management 'culture' which has infested the Depratment since the stupid and badly-managed merger which created it five years ago will do to even begin to address the issues. This is, alas, about as likely as the majority of the job cuts which will follow in the next few years coming in the areas where they are most necessary; amongst the swelling ranks of senior and middle managers who are either responsible for directing the stream of noxious piss that is current practice on the heads of those of us doing the job we're supposed to be doing; or who are filling 'non-jobs' supervising all the contracts with external corporations which have been forced on the Depratment in recent years; or being there simply to ensure that boxes are ticked for presentation to their political masters. For it is there that the 'waste' that the enemies of the public sector like to wibble on about is to be found, and found in abundance.
