I genuinely feel for all the lads who are currently out of work and wish them all the best of luck in being gainfully employed again.
I would just like to respond to a few comments made in earlier posts.
As to when we effectively come out of this recession? Well put simply it is when the financial institutions start lending again, but in reality we all know they have been burned severely (By there own doing may I add) and are in self preservation mode. We have Developers who we have worked with for years and are solid companies in their own right, furthermore they have been regularly doing business with their same bank for years and then have their funding pulled or drastically reduced as they have now jumped a risk rating due only to the banks mismanagement of its own business!!
I don’t want to be the harbinger of doom but as many of you know you need 2 quarters of growth to officially state the country is out of recession, the last quarter of 2009 obviously included Christmas which as you are aware is when we tend to spent the most and a lot of people have temporary jobs i.e. Post Office etc, that spend has stopped and all those Temps hired before Christmas will be now unemployed, so the smart money is on another dip for the 1st Quarter of 2010 which will result in more pain for us all.
I would predict that it will be a good few years until we are moving again but be assured it will be nowhere near what it was 2 years ago.
As for Temporary contracts Daz is spot on, there is just no confidence out there, projects are being shelved/cancelled at the last minute or they will complete a phase and leave the next one till funding has been raised, doesn’t help one bit but sometimes a bit of work is better than none.
As for a compliant none back chatting workforce, I have got to admit this has been the easiest time in my Management career in regards to Labour control and I have little if any problems with our lads (Apart from the PPE issue we talked about in another post) but besides the recession I’d like to think that was down to the fact that firstly, we are a small business and know all our lads as a person and not a number and most have worked for us for a long time, secondly, we have not had to lay anyone off, not dropped rates (And hope we don’t have to) and we do cover the lads short days and odd day off (At great expense to the business may I add) when work is short, there is always one who moans about not getting overtime etc (There simply isn’t a lot and when it does come we like to share it around so everyone feels the benefit)
but on the whole I think the lads feel the same way as we in the office do, times are very tough and we have to battle for everything to keep us all going and they are doing their bit. We may be the exception to the rule because I know lots of companies around us that will drop lads like hot bricks but we believe that when things do get a bit better hopefully our core lads will stick with us and not just f*ck off with the first t*at that tries to poach them for an extra tenner a day.!! I as a Manager may not have to work so hard in regard to the lads but let me assure you trying to get the work in to keep those lads going is 3 times as hard as it was 2 years ago.
As for Government assistance…Don’t get me started!! They are just not intrested in the normal working man or woman of this country, which is strange as Labour are supposed to be the party of the working man!! You have to have a self inflicted problem to get any assistance from them I mean rehab/detox programmes they will dole out in droves, I speak from personnel experience as I have a brother in law who is always in and out and is nothing but a drain on society, but ask them for a grant to further a working persons career which ultimatley will help contribute to our society with taxes and economically they just don’t want to know!! What is going on???