The Grievance Industry

A grievance is the subject of a complaint filed by an employee to be resolved by procedures provided in the employee contract. Within the public sector an industry has grown to deal with a grievance. There are people who administer the grievance. There are people who make sure the grievance is administered correctly. There are people who scrutinise the people checking that the grievance is administered correctly. There are legal firms with a no win no fee approach who look after those making the grievance. There are legal firms who help make sure the organisation responsible for the grievance don't get hoodwinked by the legal firms looking after the person who made the grievance. There is only 1 group of people who pay for this the council tax payer. The mis-use of the public sector grievance costs the tax payer £000000s. A cause of a grievance can be traced to 1 of 4 sources:

• Political correctness;
• Health & Safety;
• Crap management;
• A belief that you are good at your job when you are not.

So here are 3 stories of grievances from local councils in the UK.

(i) The Bomb Squad

This council's canteen is segregated along racial lines. The council involved was given a 4* excellence rating by the CPA and preaches multi-culturism. In the last local election the BNP acquired a seat. At lunch time the Hindus sat together while the Muslims kept themselves to the themselves. The Hindus would watch the Muslim chaps go for a walk together around the council grounds. The strap line was 'there goes the bomb squad'. A senior manager who was white had a quiet word to politely ask the Hindu chap involved to refrain from commiting islamaphobia. He didn't listen so the manager complained and raised a grievance. In response the Hindu chap raised a grievance accusing the white British manager of discrimination because he let the Muslim chaps take a break for prayers and told him off for taking excessive cigarette breaks.

(ii) Hangover

IT project managers love their alcohol and normally keep a good supply of paracetamols for the day after. On this particular occasion the project manager involved did not have any. So he went around the office asking for pills. His manager a right jobsworth spotted a member of the team handing over a couple of pills. She said it was against health and safety policy as someone could go around the office to collect pills, take an overdose and the company could be liable for their demise. The rules were there to prevent IT project managers inadvertently committing suicide and to protect the council from the costs of challenging a subsquent litigation. The members of staff involved ignored the request to refrain from issuing 2 tablets and the senior office put in a grievance citing insubordination and their authority not being recognised.

(iii) Manual Handling

Manual handling is the term to used to describe techniques for picking stuff up and moving things around without causing yourself an injury. This council opened a new Community and Sports Centre and employed a maintenance man. The union insisted all staff attended a manual handling course. A couple of weeks before the centre opened the General Manager asked the maintenance man on his first day to walk around the centre and identify all the maintenance jobs that needed to be done. Some of these jobs involved moving a couple of fridges and installing a couple of dishwashers. No different from the type of equipment you find in any home. The maintenance operative put in a grievance on the grounds the General Manager asked him to do stuff that involved moving heavy stuff around.

I say send in Terry Tate Office Linebacker to end this stoopidness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jplpjCaec

Strategy Execution Consulting

It's no big secret the public sector wastes a fortune on management consultants. As a result the 'steal your watch to tell you the time brigade' from the House of Lies come in for a hard time. If you look at it from their point of view they are invited in, they do their thing and tell the civil service powers that be their thoughts. Now imagine, you know you are talking common sense and could save the tax payer a significant amount of dosh only to find time and time again the civil servant managing you is in no position to make it happen. How are you going to feel?

Honesty is a new methodology that recognises your average employee in the public sector is basically a slave, one deck short of a full load and in it to purely boost their over-inflated protected pensions. So we at Truth Inc have developed a model to cut through the mire of garbage about putting the customer first, improving services for all and striving for corporate efficiencies. Instead we propose that you do the following to initiate the “Winds of Change”

· Ignore the customer, they are generally thick
· Impossible for service improvement if you still employ the same peasants
· You cant make a “Silk Purse” out of a “sows ear” efficiencies are pure fantasy

Accept the above and the “Winds of Change” are at your finger tips, lets face it we all know “water runs downhill” you just need to know the direction. Our consultants will load the bullet of change to speed your way to the promised land of public sector nirvana….

The Honest Approach

Honest is broad in scope encompassing the whole business Transformation Journey, as we take you from the inevitable piss poor performance levels you are currently delivering to a marginally better use of the taxpayers money by slashing and burning the people, services and processes you deploy. To explore Honesty in detail register free as a Honest member, just make sure you are not a local government employee as you will immediately be rejected on grounds of competence.

The Honesty Process

Honesty is the brainchild of a number of ex Management Consultants who have had enough of telling lies but love the profit. The new and improved Honesty cuts through the everyday local government bullshit and takes you on a journey of discovery that only the delusional would ignore. We urge all Local Government Chief Execs to ditch the lunacy of PRINCE2 and other priceless useless methodologies and get real with Honesty, the modern methodology for the more discerning card carrying local government Executive. Honest consultants come with years of experience, we know you lie, we know you don’t work hard, we know you are inept, we know you are grossly incompetent and we know you treat public money like a kid treats his sweetie allowance.

Honesty will take you on a vision led, benefits driven Transformation Journey using 8 Phases
Strategic Need – You sign a big fat fixed price contract for our unique insight on local government

Stage 1 – At Honesty we simply assume you are useless

Stage 2 – time to get the crayons and colours out

Stage 3 – countless interviews and design meetings with your people

Stage 4 – we ignore the above phase and do what we want

Stage 5 – we tinker with the odd process and call it “transformational”

Stage 6– we start to sack your people

Stage 7 – we hand over all service provision to outside private contractors

Stage 8 – Benefits realisation. At Honesty we don’t do this, its too hard and the Audit Commission wont spot the failure.

Stage 9 – You and most of your people will be on the dole

Checkout how management consultants are managed by their firms. http://www.despair.com/stories.html Got to go got an email from local governemnt Chief Executive. Something about Origami.......

Motorway Services, Crap Expensive Food, Snack Sex and a Bright Red Chocolate Starfish

When you work in a private sector job that pays the minimum wage I can guarantee you'll experience the following:

• Crap management;
• Profiteering;
• Boredom;
• Coming up with ways to do as little as possible to get through the day.

The one sector you can see all this is action is the dreaded roadside eateries and motorway services. Last I heard the motorway services industry turned over 2 billion quid a year. When you are exploited, bored and treated like poo by middle management in these places you'll do one of 6 things:

1. Smack the manager in the gob and do a runner;
2. Day dream about ripping off the company;
3. Writing to the press to blow the lid on the poor hygiene and poor customer service;
4. Pretend to be ill to get the day off;
5. Focus your energy on chatting up the ladies;
6. Get in with the inner circle who have regular sex in the store rooms & smoke pot.

So I'm working in one of these places with a guy who has been there for years. I'll call him Fred to protect his identity. Fred does this job full time and he hates the company he works for with a passion. When you see him with the customers he is nice as pie but his hatred stemmed from the way he is treated like a robot and spoken to like a like slave by the management. A few of them were OK but most were people whose only source of importance were holding sway over people like me and Fred. Boy did they enjoy it. You'd be working on the other side of the restaurant and then by Chinese whispers you'd be summoned. Upon arrival they'd ask you to go and get them a cup of tea. Anyway, Fred had watched an episode of Only Fools & Horses that had got him thinking. The one where grandad throws himself down a pub cellar to get compensation. Fred wanted to do something similar to extract compensation from the company. Over the next couple of days the ideas flowed thick and fast.

• Back pain as a result of slipping on the kitchen floor. Non starter because it happened everyday and the company lawyer had a response for every scenario. For some reason the legal eagles had perfected the art of always pinning liability on the employee who had the accident.
  
• Hand in the deep fat fryer as a result of slipping on the floor. Non starter because it was really painful and Fred did not like pain.
  
• Physical assault by the manager. Non starter because we enjoyed the punch ups with the manager in the car park. Also, everyone new the managers where soft and they'd never throw a punch.
  
• Food poisoning. Non starter because we accepted it as an occupational hazard and any investigation by the authorities resulted in more work for us. Namely, painting over the mold and fungus in the food prep areas so they looked clean. The other reason was if you pretended to have the runs you'd get a day off on the sick or more sneaky cigarette time. For a couple of months I was seeing a girl in the fast food joint. You know the period of the relationship when all you do is have sex. One evening I pretended to have the runs, met her in the ambient store room and 15 mins later we were having a smoke.

The final idea was a beaut. There were these two massive filter coffee machines. You had to stand on a stool to put several bags of coffee in the filter bit. Then this overhead pipe filled it with hot water. Sometimes the hot water and used up coffee would splash on you like napalm and cause minor burns. Fred's plan was to simulate a major overspill that would go down his back and burn him. In return for 25% on the compensation my role was to splash hot scalding water on his back and set up the special effects. So the scene was set. We'd set the machine up to over spill, splash hot water on Fred's back then he'd leg it back to the coffee point to flail all over the place in pain. In the kitchen area he bent over the sink and lifted his shirt. I was behind him with a small jug of scalding water to splash on his back. Unfortunately, I got the wrist action wrong. Instead of fling and splash it was more of a twist and pour down the crack between his two bum cheeks. That was the last time Fred ever spoke to me. It was the last time I spoke to him because the story turned into an urban 'Brokeback Mountain' myth where I was caught in an uncompromising position with Fred in a storeroom by the manager on duty. Ouch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTUWVxOD1mM

MP Alan Duncan : Rich Twit With A Big Unhelpful Gob

MP Alan Duncan Fat Cat Millionaire moaning about being poor and living on rations. Welcome to the real world you arrogant snob. What a twit. I hope David Cameron sacks him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQrNNPT-mAw

How to get Free Health-care in the USA?

The only place you can get free health care in the USA is Guantanamo Bay. Nice waiting room. Would all the rich Neo conservatives with MBAs, private healthcare and their pointless jobs in investment banking that caused the credit just sit and listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynHGSmeTito

Janet's Idea : Shame the UK Government Is Not Listening

Detailed below is a comment I found on the website of a local paper in the Midlands. The person who wrote is an everyday person. The kind from the silent majority of ordinary people who are not being listened to. The silent law abiding majority currently being let down be the corporate banking sector and the UK government. Janet's idea is called the Patriotic Retirement Plan. These are the kind of ideas that will get the UK out of the mess. Why are the politicians not thinking out of the box?

Here's Janet's suggestion for fixing Britain's economy.Instead of giving billions of pounds to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan. There are about 20 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them £1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1 They must retire. Twenty million job openings – unemployment fixed.
2 They must buy a new British car. Twenty million cars ordered – auto industry fixed.
3 They must either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – housing crisis fixed.
4 They must send their kids to school, college or university – crime rate fixed
5 Buy £50 of alcohol and/or tobacco a week – there's the Government's money back in duty/tax. It can't get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have MPs pay back their falsely-claimed expenses and second home allowances.

David Cameron aint better either http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRKhTQHrtdk

£50 Billion Quantitative Easing : Mr Creosote where's my dividend?

Apparently, I'm a shareholder and have invested in corporate banking. Nobody asked me and I didn't apply for it. I've not been invited to a shareholder meeting to vote on anything. I don't know what the annual dividend or my forecast earnings per share looks like. In the meantime some people I know cannot get drugs to help them with their terminal illness because the NHS cannot afford it. Across the other side of the world in Afghanistan and Pakistan their are a load of young men who want to slit my children's throat and blow my wife to smithereens because their country has no money to provide the most basic standard of living and anything resembling a decent education. A load of children starved to death today. What did this Government do? Gave a bunch of arrogant incompetent rich people another £50 billion of our tax payer cash. Instead of going on a diet we are letting the gluttonous corporate banking machine gorge themselves on our cash. Check out the video to see the Square Milers celebrating securing £50 million of cash for doing sweet FA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlK62rjQWLk

Barclay Profits : So FSA Wont Let Me Be and It Feels So Empty Without Me

Reading the bally hoo around Barclay's profits you'd think jesus had turned up at Canary Wharf. We all know the major corporate banks School of Enron Financial Reporting are reports that can both lie and tell a version of the truth at the same time. So I aint convinced. The future of this country cannot be dependent on making money from money. We need to be making stuff that is useful, environmentally friendly and that loadsa people want to buy. Anyway, I've attached a video showing stereotype Square Milers and investment bankers celebrating their return in the eye of a storm. Enimen mashed up with the theme tune from Only Fools & Horses. Groovy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLaX-Rbt3Os&feature=related.