I feel the need to have a rant about public sector workers

[ace00]

There's a simple solution to that - clocking in and out with security cards, and if anyone is caught using someone else's card both should be dismissed.

Course, that doesn't prevent them dossing around all day once checked in. But it's a start.

Nice idea, but whose gonna enforce it? The 10-3 shift is the managers.
The plebs have to stay as late as 4 sometimes.

I alway's liked John Bolton's quote about the UN:
"The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
Really, it applies to all public sector. Lot of private sector too.

[expat]

It's a great plan, except I can see the news story now with some scouse union leader banging on about how it'd be an infringement of their human rights or some other such tulip.

Or Jock!

Remember the Heathrow baggage handlers? One guy was caught for persistent theft. So he was fired. They went on strike to get this overturned. BAA caved in, then wanted to put in CCTV to watch him. Victimisation, they said. OK, we''ll watch everybody at work. Invasion of privacy, they said.

Oooooooh, you don't get me.....

[Zippy]

They have probably the most secure jobs in the country, the price they pay is crappier salaries than they'd get in the real world. If they don't like it they can always quit and work somewhere else. What we need is someone to get rid of public sector unions...

I take it you are working for the Civil Service atm? Just get it off your chest and breathe ..... breathe ......

[lambrini_socialist]

wife told me a funny story about her previous NHS Trust job (where, btw, they are now so paranoid about being lambasted by the right-wing press for wasting taxpayers' money, that employees are forbidden from charging their mobile phones at work in order to keep electricity bills down):

a full departmental meeting was called to debate who should foot the bill for coffee, tea and biscuits, whether a payment rota was needed etc. the meeting was quickly disbanded when one smartarse pointed out that the cost they'd already incurred simply by holding the meeting (in terms of paying salaries) outweighed any possible savings to be made by streamlining the whole Tea/Coffee/Biscuit stakeholder paradigm.

[Bagpuss]

I've heard some classics of NHS management

1/ A manager who timed his meetings by clockwork train set. Winds up train, when train stops, meeting stops.

2/ A guy who had the several people from the IT dept run out to an airport for an IT emergency. Travelling manager did not have minesweeper on his laptop.


Apparently in the NHS they get rid of incompetent people via promotion

[DiscoStu]

I take it you are working for the Civil Service atm? Just get it off your chest and breathe ..... breathe ......

Fortunately I've escaped the public sector, but it just makes me so cross everytime I read about some union leader banging on about how little they're paid and how badly they're treated when if you put half of them in the private sector they'd be binned within weeks for being crap.

[Sockpuppet]

There's a simple solution to that - clocking in and out with security cards, and if anyone is caught using someone else's card both should be dismissed.

Course, that doesn't prevent them dossing around all day once checked in. But it's a start.

Or do what we do here (for the permies, us external consultants are expempt). To clock in and out you need to provide a hand scan. Palm + Finger Prints.

All of these machines are also covered by CCTV so your mate can't bring your severed hand in either.

[Zippy]

Fortunately I've escaped the public sector, but it just makes me so cross everytime I read about some union leader banging on about how little they're paid and how badly they're treated when if you put half of them in the private sector they'd be binned within weeks for being crap.

I know

I used to (naively) suggest that - if they were so unhappy - there were lots of better paid, more fulfilling jobs out there. Then I'd have to listen to the excuses for why they couldn't (pension, working hours, having to work etc). Sigh ...

[TheBigYinJames]

There is a simpler solution. Stop worrying about what other people are "getting away with". What goes around comes around.

[ratewhore]

...but it just makes me so cross everytime I read about some union leader banging on about how little they're paid...

Sorry, are you talking about the poor underpaid fuel bowser drivers now?