Redundancy

I've mentioned a few times that I worked for Unisys Australia through the 1990's. And, as I've said, for the most part I enjoyed working for them. But there was one thing that was hard to cope with and that was the periodic waves of redundancies. Yeah, I know it wasn't only Unisys, but I wasn't working for the other companies.

The financial year ran January to January; as a consequence the redundancies always seemed to happen in the first week of December. Way to spoil Christmas for those who enjoy it!

And some years they were conducted in very hamfisted ways. The 1993 wave for example. As always seems to happen, rumours of yet another culling were circulating during the week before. I varied my usual routine enough to arrive at the office at 8:30 AM. (I usually don't stick to the advertised hours; any employer who has a problem with that has the choice; quantity or quality - fighting words wouldn't you say? :-))

For the first half hour of that day there were periodic pagings; could so and so go to reception on the 7th floor? It didn't take us long to realise that these were those getting the chop. As time wore on those of us who hadn't been called became more and more tense. If you've ever been through such an experience you know exactly what I mean; if not, I hope you never do!

And then, at 9 AM, they paged the rest of us, all of us, to go to the 7th floor. Disbelief. Surely they couldn't be closing the entire branch office? No, they weren't. We were herded into the large conference room and, when the door was closed behind us, those who had been culled were led from the small conference room to their desks, thence to the front door and off the premises.

Another time they killed the email accounts of everyone affected without taking into account the 3 hour time difference between Melbourne and Perth. Those who turned up early to work in Perth found themselves locked out and that only increased the anxiety level over there.

And so I survived cull after cull. I'm not sure why. By the August 2000 cull (an off cycle cull) I'd not had any productive work for almost 2 years. The rumour had gone around that anyone with less than 80% billable hours was for the chop; when I checked my stats I was at 13%!

Amazingly I wasn't culled!

Picture us in our office as that morning proceeded. At 9 AM I was sure I was going to be jobless by noon and worried about the prospect. By 10 AM I hadn't been called and we'd been discussing the size of redundancy payments. With almost 12 years under my belt I would get a reasonable payout. By 11 AM I was hoping for the call and by noon I was disappointed :-)

Not long after I was assigned to a new boss. She'd started with the company 3 days after I did in the same department so we knew each other pretty well. And her first management type question to me was 'well, what does Rob want in the next year'. Few things annoy me more than some arsehole doing the third person on me in that way so I answered 'Rob wants to be made redundant in the next round'. She was shocked! 'You can't volunteer!' I shrugged.

A couple of weeks later I was enjoying a smoke in the basement with our HR rep. I told her that she should consider my name for the next round of redundancies. Same shocked answer. Well you tell me, what is better? Sack some poor bastard who doesn't want to be sacked? Or sack someone who wants to be on the list? To me it's a no-brainer. Either way you reduce the headcount by 1.

A couple of weeks later my new boss wanted me to go to Perth for an indeterminate period of time that was probably going to be close on a year. I had a new girlfriend at the time and I was only willing to go if they'd pay her airfare to accompany me. They weren't. So I knocked the assignment back. And my new boss made a mistake! She suggested (I don't remember the exact words) that as we weren't married I couldn't refuse. Ah, I said, so you're going to discriminate against me on the grounds of my marital status. Aha! I had her! She couldn't force the issue without falling afoul of equal opportunity legislation.

So it should come as no surprise that in December 2000 my name was on the redundancy list, exactly where I wanted it to be!

I was called into the small conference room on the 7th floor at 8:30 AM. Indeed, my name was the first called.

They hadn't coached the poor bastard who had to tell me. He approached it in much the way I think I'd approach it if I had to be the one to sack someone. Some mumbled words about what a great contribution I'd made over the years to the company; regrets that the time had come for us to part ways. He was unprepared for what followed. Because what I did was leap out of the chair, in much the same fashion as those people in the Toyota Yes! ads, fist in the air, and I did a little war dance!

And the first words out of my mouth after that were; 'how much?'