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The wonderful world of work choices
Izzie slinks into the nasty netcafe for a quick squiggle. Today is the first day of the bright and shiny new roster at Izzie's day job. They have juggled the hours once again. For quite a while, in the afternoons we had two elves working 4-10pm, one 4-9 and the fourth 5-9 plus the 2-8 house elf who does baby sitting duties in the dining room. Now, in the interests of efficiency and fairness - this has been changed to two 3-10pm shifts with a 30 minute unpaid meal break, one 3-9 and two 5-9s. And guess who gets the pissy little 5-9 again?. Of course - it would have made more sense to have three 3-9 and two 5-10 which would be a total of 28 hours - one more than the 27 provided by this new arrangement. That would have been fairer but who gives a shit about fairness. And they seems to have so so forgotten about their past experience with having two 5-9 shifts where people so often ring in sick at the last minute or simply don't bother turning up. For folks who have to drive from up in the hills - some 15-20km away - it simply does not pay to turn up for a pissy little four hours. And get 3 or more of those in a week and you either have to do double shifts or get another job to get enough hours to live on. If they keep this shit up, they may as well put a clause on all their employment adverts requiring all applicants to be sterilized and childless with a rich husband or wife (Oh and no aged parents either)
Izzie has 3 weeks annual leave coming up on Wednesday 19th October - but for the week preceding that - ie the one starting today - got the princely sum of 21.5 hours - been given three days off this week when we normally have only two and two of them are on the higher paying Saturday and Sunday. The bitch is basically getting back at the Izzie for saying no to those night shifts.
Had to resort to using up 40 hours of annual leave on the pay just gone because dearest Dolores is on a power trip and is getting so pissed off with people who don't ask "How high" when she tells them to jump. Anyone - who refuses to do a night shift gets crossed off for those shifts and gets no replacement hours - ie let's starve the bastards into submission.
So - it will be interesting to see if she is so so petty and spiteful that she tells the folks doing the payrolls not to pay out those 40 hours of holiday pay. Today is payday and will get to see on the payslips just exactly what has happened.
So so hard to know what to do. Do you stand up and fight a losing battle with the bitch or get the message and just piss off and leave like the rest of the elves? The latest one has left because her hours got slashed to a ridiculous 7 four hour shifts in the fortnight with only one weekend day among them. The boss refused to give her more hours and basically said that if you don't like it you can always leave and that is exactly what Annette has done. Izzie is so so upset because Annette - like Makende who left two weeks before that - is a decent friendly hard working elf who both does her fair share and is nice to the residents and the other elves. And she also speaks English which is becoming less and less common lately.
As the Izzie status is part-time, we really need to find out if there is a minimum number of hours that we are entitled to per week and if there is - more importantly - how to be able make the bitch give them to us.
The hairy scary thing is - this is all happening before the introduction of the Insidious Rodent's brave new Industrial relations reform which he so tweely calls Work Choice (all those smiling happy little families of house elves - makes Izzie want to puke. For God's sake - folks are finding it hard to have time for their families with present working arrangements - let alone this new law of the jungle)
Getting extra pay for weekends, evenings, nights or public holidays will soon become a thing of the past under this new lean and very mean agenda. It struck Iz as very strange that they pegged the standard working week at 38 hours. Most peculiar thinks Iz. Was half expecting 60 hours from this guttersnipe. It seems too good to be true. He must be up to something. But at the same time wondering what it means in reality if there is to be no longer any extra payment for hours longer than those 38. Needless to say - the devil is in the detail. This 38 hour weeks is to be averaged out over an entire year! So, in theory, you could get your house elves to work 76 hours a week for 23 weeks in a row - even without overtime rates, the taxes on such earnings would be horrendous and then nothing for the rest of the year with the resulting lack of income. All this would be perfectly legal. Of course - an employer would have to be pretty stupid to try it because it would be hard to get folks willing to work under such conditions. But there are always those whose standards of behaviour are not guided by commonsense or decency but the limits of the law.
And making house elf labour cheaper and tenure more precarious and removing the right to sue for unfair dismissal for workplaces with less than 100 employees - is hardly conducive to increasing productivity or safety standards. After all - one does not need to actually do it - but to let it be hinted that you could be sacked for insisting on following proper safety precautions is enough to scare most elves into submission. And Izzie refusing to do night shift would certainly have been sufficient grounds for dismissal
Yessss. The likes of Dolores will be elevated to the status of National Treasure and will soon be given the green light to go all the way in their attempts to stamp out any smidgeon of their house elves' right to a life outside of working hours.
Izzie has 3 weeks annual leave coming up on Wednesday 19th October - but for the week preceding that - ie the one starting today - got the princely sum of 21.5 hours - been given three days off this week when we normally have only two and two of them are on the higher paying Saturday and Sunday. The bitch is basically getting back at the Izzie for saying no to those night shifts.
Had to resort to using up 40 hours of annual leave on the pay just gone because dearest Dolores is on a power trip and is getting so pissed off with people who don't ask "How high" when she tells them to jump. Anyone - who refuses to do a night shift gets crossed off for those shifts and gets no replacement hours - ie let's starve the bastards into submission.
So - it will be interesting to see if she is so so petty and spiteful that she tells the folks doing the payrolls not to pay out those 40 hours of holiday pay. Today is payday and will get to see on the payslips just exactly what has happened.
So so hard to know what to do. Do you stand up and fight a losing battle with the bitch or get the message and just piss off and leave like the rest of the elves? The latest one has left because her hours got slashed to a ridiculous 7 four hour shifts in the fortnight with only one weekend day among them. The boss refused to give her more hours and basically said that if you don't like it you can always leave and that is exactly what Annette has done. Izzie is so so upset because Annette - like Makende who left two weeks before that - is a decent friendly hard working elf who both does her fair share and is nice to the residents and the other elves. And she also speaks English which is becoming less and less common lately.
As the Izzie status is part-time, we really need to find out if there is a minimum number of hours that we are entitled to per week and if there is - more importantly - how to be able make the bitch give them to us.
The hairy scary thing is - this is all happening before the introduction of the Insidious Rodent's brave new Industrial relations reform which he so tweely calls Work Choice (all those smiling happy little families of house elves - makes Izzie want to puke. For God's sake - folks are finding it hard to have time for their families with present working arrangements - let alone this new law of the jungle)
Getting extra pay for weekends, evenings, nights or public holidays will soon become a thing of the past under this new lean and very mean agenda. It struck Iz as very strange that they pegged the standard working week at 38 hours. Most peculiar thinks Iz. Was half expecting 60 hours from this guttersnipe. It seems too good to be true. He must be up to something. But at the same time wondering what it means in reality if there is to be no longer any extra payment for hours longer than those 38. Needless to say - the devil is in the detail. This 38 hour weeks is to be averaged out over an entire year! So, in theory, you could get your house elves to work 76 hours a week for 23 weeks in a row - even without overtime rates, the taxes on such earnings would be horrendous and then nothing for the rest of the year with the resulting lack of income. All this would be perfectly legal. Of course - an employer would have to be pretty stupid to try it because it would be hard to get folks willing to work under such conditions. But there are always those whose standards of behaviour are not guided by commonsense or decency but the limits of the law.
And making house elf labour cheaper and tenure more precarious and removing the right to sue for unfair dismissal for workplaces with less than 100 employees - is hardly conducive to increasing productivity or safety standards. After all - one does not need to actually do it - but to let it be hinted that you could be sacked for insisting on following proper safety precautions is enough to scare most elves into submission. And Izzie refusing to do night shift would certainly have been sufficient grounds for dismissal
Yessss. The likes of Dolores will be elevated to the status of National Treasure and will soon be given the green light to go all the way in their attempts to stamp out any smidgeon of their house elves' right to a life outside of working hours.
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Work "Choice"