...and tomorrow the new regime at work begins.
What has happened is this:
The company I work for - a charity telephone fundraising company, we shall call Icy Association, went into administration for about 45 minutes back in August. We were taken over by a company I shall call the Quine Organsition. The Quine Organisation had previously taken over another charity telephone fundraising company I shall call Hale and Hearty. Many things have been restructured at work. Most of the current management have been made redundant. All the employees of Hale and Hearty have now come over to our site (a crumbling cross between a crumbling factory and an abandoned hospital that had best be called Old Scotland House). The employees of Hale and Hearty all work in a room where IT used to be. Though we are working in the same building - in fact the same floor - the two companies are very separate.
The management of the Quine Organisation are a sinister faceless lot. They prowl the corridors looking like the Sontarans from Doctor Who. They have gone out of their way to be unnapproachable and unfriendly. Thanks to the ministrations of our staff reps we have, at least, managed to keep our wages as they are. Not that this will do us much good in the long run. New starters are going to be paid the minimum wage (and I think any company that pays their staff the minimum wage deserve all contempt and disgust that can be heaped upon them). This means that, I imagine, they will be eager to get rid of the old staff (on £9 plus an hour) as soon as possible. It will become a lot stricter, there will be a greater emphasis on statistics. It is through these, we all think, that they will find reasons to put us on disciplinaries (breaks too long! not enough pledges!) and eventually fire us. Tomorrow is when we shall adhere to the new ways of working - shorter breaks and longer shifts, and when the new management style begins to take hold on our already weary, haunted hearts.
All this makes me think of my last job where something similar happened, and within six months, a tolerable job turned into something hellish and I had to leave.
I really hope the same isn't going to happen again.
