Redundancy Is Looming…

Is this liberation or a cause for angst?

As the coalition cuts bite into the public sector, many workers are having to face stark choices – the devil you know or the deep blue sea. Should I take the voluntary redundancy package offered or competitively interview for a job on a lower grade with the possibility of further restructures in March and a compulsory redundancy further down the line?

It is a rather lonely decision these days because there is no collective response. The union is absent. Management ignores them. Threatened employees are invited to individual meetings where management can manipulate insecurities to their advantage. Everyone I know has not bothered to ask the lone union rep to accompany them believing her to be more of a liability than an aid in striking a desperate deal. One or two have asked trusted work colleagues to attend as observers but most have attended these meetings alone and endeavoured to make the best deal possible. However, despite management’s desire to isolate and bully individuals into accepting what they want, we have begun to speak to each other, to share information and to help or advise one another where we can. This is not the same as the old days of group meetings and collective workplace action but it helps to stave off that feeling of persecution and vulnerability.

The climate of deepening recession is not the most opportune moment to apply for a new job or to consider a risky career change, yet one can’t help feeling liberated by the decision to take voluntary redundancy. One reason for this is that the public sector I joined in the early nineties does not feel the same as the one I am now considering leaving. There is no longer an ethos of public service that once provided a measure of job satisfaction despite the lower wages and crappy workplaces we endured in comparison to our private sector counterparts.

These days aloof management is prized over sincerity and passion. Our chief executive invites staff to shadow her for a day in an attempt to show how ‘open’ her style of management is but her ‘openness’ only reveals the lack of values that drive the organisation. She is open about the fact that she doesn’t need to know the issues of every department or the details of every complaint. That’s what her managers are for. Pass it on. This leaves her free to network, to procure funding, to spout the right sound-bites and assuage important groups of irate clients. This can be seen as efficient delegation of responsibilities but it also feels remote.

Her managers do not appear to be driven by values of customer care or public service. They are driven by the requirement to tick boxes: to achieve endless targets, or the obligatory Investors In People certificate, or the two stars to procure government funding and a higher listing in the local government quarterly league tables. The provision of a service to the ordinary individual customer at the front desk or at the end of a phone line comes low down the list of priorities. Of course every poster, leaflet and newsletter says the exact opposite. The customer comes first. Right first time. You matter to us. Our Values are posted up everywhere. The shrill need to assert our values belies the lack of belief in anything. What’s more important is that you answer the phone in three rings. That’s easily measured.

I am reminded of the labour leadership Question Time last night. The repetitive candidate assertions about morals and values punctuating vacuous contributions left me cold. Ironically, Dianne Abbott, who happens to be my local MP and who normally sounds somewhat wooden, appeared the most human of the lot but that’s because she’s really there to keep on board those who Vote Labour With No Illusions rather than win the leadership contest.

The public sector today reflects the lack of belief in our wider society and in western democracies around the world. It would seem that even our Universe lacks a centre; to the glee of a growing band of atheists and pope-haters, Stephen Hawkings recently pronounced that with the development of science there is no longer any need for the existence God. What is there to believe in today? A growing number may no longer believe in God but everyone believes in the doomed message of climate change or the universal prevalence of child abuse and terrorism. But like the father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, human beings need something to inspire them, something to hope for in order to survive.

Certainly, walking away from a job without meaning feels less scary and more liberating. Perhaps as Bingham in the film Up in the Air says to every worker facing the sack ‘anyone who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you’re sitting’. That gives me some hope. So if you’re at a loose end this October, you can join me at The Battle of Ideas where changing the world is definitely on the agenda.