If there's one thing that has gone wrong more than anything
else, in the last two decades with hospital portering; if there is a single central
issue that encompasses all our other regressions, it's casualization. HPing has
been downgraded from part of the traditional working class to what has become
known as "the precariat". I think this is a deliberate policy. An
employment agency is a middle man between yourself and any prospective job. A
quick Google will find literally hundreds of them in my country alone.
According to their own promotional propaganda, the purpose of an agency is to
streamline the employment process by matching prospective workers with suitable
employers. Rather than spend his or her life running from one application form
or interview to the next, a jobseeker who signs up for an agency can sit back
and let the agency handle all that. Sound good doesn't it? The problem is that
an agency worker inevitably becomes a rootless drifter; moving from one job to
the next, never staying long enough to gain experience, bond with their
colleagues or gather long service benefits (should they even exist these days).
Many agency workers are on zero-hours contracts, meaning that the agency is not
obliged to find them employers who offer a basic week, a minimum number of
hours. The workers become the very definition of Karl Marx' rhapsodic description
of the typical communist citizen; he could be a farmer in the morning, a
builder in the afternoon and paint pictures in the evening. Marx saw this as a
good thing, but it is not. For most people, especially men, work is a part of
our identity. In the days when the traditional working class existed, a job was
not just a job; it was something you belonged to and was the centre of your
society. In a town with a factory, the young men would all go and work there
when they finished school. In that factory their colleagues would become like
new family members. They often ended up marrying a girl from the offices. After
a while, depending on the quality of their labour, they would be granted
privileges for their commitment; more pay, longer holidays, a place in the
company pension scheme, promotion opportunities etc. At the Oxford BMW car
factory near where I live, in the good old days, when somebody died they would
even be "laid in state"; their coffin would be placed in the middle
of the shop floor. At a company wedding all staff who could be spared would
attend and the boss would often give the couple his blessing.
Those days are over. Wikipedia defines the
"precariat" thus: "
A
social class only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive
unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to
jobs and to decent earnings. Classic examples of such unpaid activities include
continually having to search for work, including preparing for and attending
job interviews, as well as being expected to be perpetually responsive to calls
for work yet without being paid an actual wage for being on call. The hallmark
of the precariat class is the condition of lack of job security, including
intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious
existence." It's a portmanteau word of "precarious" and
"proletariat". This is also the definition of casualization. For
employers only interested in maximizing short term profits and with no desire
to create a long-term, high quality, sustainable industry, casualization is
perfect because it means you can pay your staff as little as you like, within
government minimum wage regulations, and provide no other facilities that cost
money. No paid leave, no pension, no increments etc. So you make a fast buck
with a cheap and nasty service. During my career as a HP I actually witnessed
the transformation from one situation to the other and it's one of the most
painful experiences I've ever endured. Agencies embody the old adage that
conscripts make bad soldiers. How can an agency worker ever be committed to the
job they do when they have not specifically chosen this occupation, they have
no contractual rights to it and they could be shipped off to a totally
different place in a week's time with no notice at all? What is sad is that I
knew many porters who joined through an agency and fell in love with HPing in
the same way I did. The sensible thing in that situation would be for
management immediately to offer such a valuable asset a permanent contract.
They often promised to do just that, but didn't keep that promise. I knew
porters who had been serving in OxRad for three or more years through the
agency and desperately wanted a contract, but management wouldn't give them one.
It was almost as if they did not want hardworking, dedicated professional
staff. (Why else would they have got rid of me so eagerly? See:
https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html.)
I once asked about that to somebody in Trust HR and she replied that agency
staff are there so managers can asses them without commitment and if they're
any good they will be kept on. What she was referring to here is a trial
period. In principle I have no objection to that at all. In a service as vital
as HPing you should have to prove you've got what it takes. However, agency
work does not constitute a trial period. During a trial period an employee is
in direct employment by their employer for a temporary period; and that period
is fixed, usually from three to six months. This is a test. At the end, if you
pass that test the employer must put up or shut up; offer you a permanent job
or let you go. An agency worker is stuck in a limbo of indefinite trial without
even any temporary employment. It is
not
the same! I don't object to casual employment on a small scale; in fact such a thing
has always existed in the form of "temping" or "stop gap"
jobs for people whose lifestyle is suited to it, usually students or working
mothers. The problem is that this kind of employment has expanded to the point
where is it displacing all other kinds. It is now the norm, not the exception. I
don't know what the solution to this problem is. To repair the damage done by
casualization and restore the traditional proletariat would require a
transformation outside of any mechanism I can image. However, I always believe
in something coming out of left field. Very often the solution is something we
can't image, but that doesn't stop it being there, waiting for the right
moment. I hope that moment is soon.
See here for more
information: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2013/04/what-class-are-you.html.
