Try Saying That Ten Times Quickly
I need to refer to my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' here, in case you haven't worked out what an 'Ocker' is, and whether you can eat it, drink it or wear it to keep off the rain. Art!
An Ocker in full plumage
Neither of the first two, unless you rock that cannibal vibe, nor the third one unless you can casually heft the weight of a full-grown Australian male, which is what an Ocker is. Usually of the loud and excessively boisterous variety, and made famous (it says here) thanks to the television program 'The Mavis Bramston Show'.
The ockers in question for this tale of manglement and malicious compliance were neither loud nor aggressive, just quietly devious. For Lo! this Youtube tale takes place in Australia, a welcome change from South Canada, and a country which has things like employment laws and unions, both of which are anathema to South Canadian manglement. Art!
The tale takes place in a large Oz hospital, the name of which is never mentioned, nor the state in which it exists, and Googling didn't help at all, merely bringing up the collapse of 'Healthscope', a private Oz hospital enterprise.
Manglement at the hospital thought they were being clever by notifying staff of an impending restructure - the Friday before Christmas, with a consultation period deadline of January 7th, restructure to be implemented in February. So, three weeks maximum and at Christmas. Art!
Hospital manglement pin-up
Restructure Undermining Employee, hereafter RUE, described redundancy in the health sector in Oz: employment of up to 13 years gets a redundancy payout of $113,000 Oz, plus any untaken leave, all tax-free <short pause for South Canadian managers reading this to use smelling salts>. RUE also added that under Oz law, employers making a restructure HAD to arrange 'genuine consultations' with staff at risk. In this case about 200 staff from a total of 4,000, under the manglement rubric of 'realignment, better patient outcomes and more efficient practice', which translates as 'cutting the wage bill'. Art!
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| Hey, that's Prince Robot IV from 'Saga' in the background! |
The unions involved go to an industrial court and argue that the timescale is too short, especially considering the holiday season, and ask for an extension. The judge grants this BUT BUT BUT! emphatically states that there needs to be 'genuine consultation' about the redundancies.
Hospital manglement leave the court rubbing their hands with ill-informed glee, because the unions encourage their members to ask as many questions as possible; that's the 'genuine consultation' part being honoured. RUE's union members alone generated 1,200 questions, over 700 of which were unique, and the other union members added another 800 questions of their own.
Manglement are now wringing their hands with well-deserved angst, and try to push on by ignoring the questions, which sends the unions back to the industrial court. Which promptly puts the restructure on hold and orders manglement to answer ALL the questions within one month. Art!
Three weeks later manglement replies with 'Yes/No/Maybe/Unsure', angering the judge, who recognizes false consultation when he sees it.
RUE updates the date: June. So manglement have been paying out salaries for 200 people for another 3 months thanks to their questionable admin skills and inability to co-operate or predict staff responses.
To get around this impasse they announce a new restructure, effective in four weeks, which the unions go back to court with, and again there is a requirement for 'genuine consultation'.
RUE updates the date: December. So manglement have been paying out salaries for 200 people for another 9 months thanks to their questionable admin skills and inability to co-operate or predict staff responses. This is, remember, a YEAR after the initial notification of the restructure, yet the hospital is still running fine. What was the justification for this restructure again? Art!
A collective IQ of 37
Manglement bring in a specialist consultant to hive the problem off to, whom tries to push through the restructure without consultation, rather trashing her job title in the process and doubtless racking up $1,000s of Oz dollars in the process. The unions - you may be ahead of me here - go back to court, where an enraged judge orders manglement to have monthly meeting about the consultation and questions, which he will chair.
RUE updates the timeline: another TWO YEARS later. The restructure finally goes through, but only a fraction of the original 200 are made redundant, which fraction RUE does not specify, but we can guess at perhaps 40. Whom were all near retirement age and who walked away with $113,000 plus holiday pay each. In a killing joke, some of the hospital departments under threat actually acquired more staff, thanks to under-manning and excessive workload being identified in the consultation. Thus you can almost guarantee that the wage bill hardly reduced at all. Art!
The average wage in Oz is a handy $100,000 per annum, meaning that manglement shelled out $60,000,000 over this restructuring process, in order to save $4,000,000 but shell out possibly that same sum in hiring new staff.
Roll With It
Yes, another clip of Hom. Sap. being stupid with dangerous items that are either insanely sharp, explosive, heavy or all three at once. Art!
I've no idea what's going on here, nor what caused it, there's no identifying posters or signage and the commentary merely talks about molten metal. It seems to be a furnace of some kind, processing molten metal, and this kind of explosive effects happens if there is any moisture in the metal being slung into the furnace. Art!
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| Discover Tech US blurred his face out. How compassionate. |
This one shows explicitly what goes wrong. Here's a giant roll of steel plate, tightly compacted and cinched for transport to the mill. Here comes yon chap in a boilersuit, who's a big fan of Blur, apparently. Art!
Damon Albarn uses bolt-cutters to sever the first retaining band, which had been under a lot of tension to judge from how it bounces about. Art!
Damon and his trusty bolt-cutters sever the second band. No prizes for guessing what happens next. Art!
The steel roll unrolls, so hard and fast that it knocks him and his bolt-cutters out of the way, and he continues to move away out of shot, mightily embarrassed yet with all body parts still attached. If the roll's edge had hit him, it would have operated as an industrial-scale scalpel. Next time, loosen the restraints somewhat.
You What?
Since Conrad unsubscribed from 'The Daily Beast' I no longer get those bizarre Temu offers on gadgets that are truly unguessable unless you click on said item, to discover that it's a tool for replacing golf divots, or a stand-alone 70 cc petrol engine. However - first use today! - a rather strange advert came up on my newsfeed. Art!
A Little Gentle Shoeing Whilst He's Down
As I've said before, Fat Caligula has a 'zeppelin ego', being huge but very, very fragile. My other cruel nickname, 'Dozy Donold' also annoys the Dog Buns! out of him, because he cannot and will not admit to having any health problems or that he falls asleep in meetings. He'll insist on this until the very second he keels over dead from a myocardial infarction. Art!
" - without tilting" is the rest of the sentence. Let me up the Word Count and put up the whole paragraph.
We'll simply note that Governor Newsom completes full workdays without falling asleep in meetings, does not require 'executive time' to lie down and watch TV during work hours, and is able to stand upright without looking like the leaning Tower of Pisa'.
His posture is weird because he has lifts in his shoes, in order to reach 6' 3" because that height would mean he's not clinically obese. Yeah right <said with sarcasm>.
Expect The Nodfather to blow up on Truth Social and slander Newsom back, because whilst he loves to mock other people, his epidermis when being insulted himself is incredibly thin.
Finally -
Right, I've got Christmas cake ingredients to measure and a cake tin to line. Wish me luck!
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