Thursday, September 13, 2007

It'll deflate!


People at work are becoming angry with Pete. There are 10 of us "Process Technicians" on the chemical plant, plus 1 manager, 1 planner, 1 engineer and 3 laboratory staff. We (the technicians) are left to our own devices when it comes to filling in our time sheets, and fair enough, everyone fiddles 15-30 minutes of extra time onto their total hours to make up for not getting paid on bank holidays like the rest of the site do.
Our plant manager knows this and "turns a blind eye" so long as the work gets done. But Pete is rushing the job in order to leave at 12:15 and claiming he is leaving at 14:00 when the rest of us leave.
Because of this, it's only a matter of time before they install a clocking in/out machine, which would then ruin it for the rest of us. Pete is a likeable old chap, but at times he is generally self centred and only thinks "what's in it for me" regardless of anyone else, which is a bad personality trait in my opinion.....there again it seems to be human nature!
I'll keep an eye on this situation and see what happens.

There was a brief but funny moment in the tearoom at lunchtime. Dean (young whippersnapper) entered the room and opened a ready meal, saw that the oven was on/in use and opened the oven door to see if there was any room for his meal. When he opened the oven, Pat (miserable old koot, who thinks he is the only one entitled to use the kitchen appliances) screamed NO!!!! and ran over to the oven, Dean jumped in shock and nearly tripped backwards over a chair, thinking the oven was going to explode. Then (clutching his chest after nearly suffering a heart attack) asked Pat "what's the matter?" to which Pat replied "I'm cooking a Yorkshire pudding and if you open the door, you'll let the heat escape, and it'll deflate" Dean (still clutching at his heart) just stared at him in disbelief.

6 comments:

Bazza said...

Could've been the first person to have a heart attack brought on by a Yorkshire pudding!

Kev Brown said...

hahaha.

Anonymous said...

ha. your work sounds amusing.

i hate punch clocks at work. you know, the people who want to steal alot of time from the company are going to find a way to do it.

(M)ary said...

so, i guess my point is that why bother with the punch clock?

Anonymous said...

On the one hand it sounds like you work with a load of fuckwits kev.

But on the other....

When you get paid a wage you are selling your labor as a commodity to the capitalist. However you are only being paid a percentage of the total value that you add to the product.

The capitalist takes the rest for himself (His profit).

He (The Capitalist) owns the means of production(Raw materials, machines, sales outlets etc) which does not in itself produce anything( On the contrary it costs money!!).

For example let’s say you get paid 100 pounds per day for your labor. You are actually imparting 150 pounds of sale value to the product you are making via the inherent cost of the raw mats plus your labor (these figures are arbitrary). The blood sucking Capitalist (Or Reckitts)takes this 50 pounds per day away from you and puts it in his own pocket!!! For what???? He only owns the means of production!!! He does not actually create value!

This 50 pounds is what is called Surplus value
and the capitalist has become very good at extracting this surplus value from us workers. He is constantly looking for new ways to do this and one way which is very fashionable at the minute is called
Continuous improvement.

We are encouraged to become more productive in the guise that it will safeguard our jobs against china and that we will be more involved and satisfied in our work.

In reality we end up breaking our backs (becoming more productive) for the same pay but who benefits??? We don't, the customer does not as prices in general do not fall so that only leaves the capitalist creaming off increased surplus value.

The better workforces become at implementing lean then the faster the demise of the "Great place to work". The capitalist however would have you believe the opposite.

AS soon as a manufacturing company is ready to set up and distribute in china or India etc then it will regardless of how lean you become.

This is because the actual wage paid to the worker is less that the one paid to you ( lets say the Chinese dude gets 50 pound a day instead of your 100 squid a day). The value added to the product will still be 150pounds a day because the method of your production will be transferred to the Chinese man. The nett result is that instead of the capitalist creaming off 50 pounds a day from your labor, he now takes 100!!!!

Add to this the fact that many people do not take their full dinner breaks or other break entitlements any more!! That is to say people are actually working periods when they are not being paid!! Talk about the capitalist increasing productivity!! Surplus value for nothing!!

We have not even begun to discuss our depreciating pensions etc. against the capitalist bonanza pensions!

As I said at the beginning you are selling your labor( a Commodity) to the capitalist (Reckitt.) But you have to work before you get paid!!.

Imagine buying a commodity from a shop say a cd player and then paying for it after you have decided whether you are happy with its performance or not!!

Its like the laborer (us) extending credit to the capitalist by saying yes you have bought me for a year at say 25K but you can pay me by monthly installments!! Do we get interest for that??? Of course not!!

I think what I am trying to say is that although Pete is probably being a little cheeky and exploiting the system with the time sheet, that is nothing compared to with how the worker is daily undervalued and exploited by the blood sucking Mr Reckitt.

You should all stick together as the capitalist is an expert in the old divide and conquer hence people get paid different rates for the same job.

That however is a discussion for another day.

Rob D

Kev Brown said...

Liked very much what you had to say Mr Rob D, but what is annoying the rest of us, is that is basically taking the piss out of US, the work still needs to be done and if he's not there to do it, that means one of us has to do it for him. He's proper mugging us off!