Starfleet had an all-hands call on Wednesday, and it was one of those calls to declare a "...notification of intent to enter a period of employee consultation, to review options for addressing the business challenges in the UK."
This is an exceedingly long-handed phrase for "there is about to be another round of redundancies". In a very interesting article on Forbes about Starfleet, where it described accurately what a lot of us are feeling, one of its key messages was that we cannot continue to cut our way to business success.
Apparently the article was wrong.
Anyhow, that news feels about as fixed a diary date as Christmas, and there was a lot of animated discussions afterwards, in fact plenty of it before hands, since the phrase "All Hands Call" is one that conjures sadly only one thought.
One wagster suggested that the call might be about to offer us a Christmas bonus for all our support during a tough year. It is perhaps a sad indictment of the climate at Starfleet that there are several in my sphere of acquaintance that would definitely see voluntary redundancy as a Christmas bonus. Indeed, one colleague stated that he would not consider leaving Starfleet of his own accord, since, in his words, "that is a waste of nineteen years of service."
We are not doing much this weekend. We were out Saturday, but events have changed and actually I am not so sad to be staying in. Last weekend's Seventies night was great fun, but set me back in terms of recovery from the illness, so a quieter Saturday evening will be good for the soul. We have A&E for lunch on Sunday so will no doubt have a few drinks then to make up for things.
Have a great weekend, and speak next week.
1 comment:
July's retirement seems to have been a magnificent decision, now.
Knowing how things work at Starfleet, this as exercise to get rid of people who "do" for people who "measure" or people who flap the arms about a lot.
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