YOU CAN DO IT WITHOUT B&QING IT

One of the problems that any government, SNP, Tory or Labour will have when introducing legislation on wages is that companies will simply find ways around it.

Here is a letter from an employee of B&Q, the company which was firmly on the side of the NO campaign in our referendum and which issued warnings about paused investment if we voted YES, and, when the No side won, did more than pause investment. It closed stores all over the UK, including one which was handy to Munguin's Republic in Dundee.

The writer has called himself Kevin Smith in order to hide his identity. I hope his gender, location and career history have been similarly doctored, otherwise the management of B&Q should have little difficulty in identifying him.

It's amazing what big companies like this will do in order to avoid paying people a wage, which, although it is called "a living wage", is not.

He has a campaign going here. You might want to sign, if you think B&Q is acting unfairly. If you aren't a petition signing type, you may wish to consider your DIY shopping habits.

After their behaviour in the referendum and subsequent closing of stores, I restrict my shopping there to an absolute minimum. If I can get something elsewhere, then I will. I never cut off my nose to spite my face in boycotts*, but I spend a lot less there than I used to, and I'll spend even less now.

I wonder how proud Johann Lamont is of being associated with this company!

Here is the letter/petition.

I have worked for B&Q for over 5 years, I started in the business working as a part time customer advisor and have worked my way up to a management position. I live and work in a high cost living area of London. The past month has been one of the most difficult for me personally and as a manager.

In early February 2016, after the Government announced that the minimum wage would be increased to a new ‘national living wage’, B&Q ran a consultation of its pay and rewards framework. They proposed the following changes:

• removal of time and a half pay for working Sundays,
• restructuring of allowances for working in high cost of living areas of the UK
• removal of double time for working bank holidays (now proposed to be 1.5) 
• Removal of a summer and winter bonus equating to 6% of annual salary 

The full time customer advisors are being hit the hardest. Those who have worked within the business for over a decade and know our customers and our business the best are losing thousands of pounds a year. B&Q are asking people to sign their new terms and conditions of employment or they will be dismissed.

As a manager it has been incredibly difficult conducting consultations with people that are set to lose thousands of pounds and telling them that if they don’t sign by March 24th they will lose their job.

Big businesses like B&Q are using the national living wage as an excuse to cut overall pay and rewards for the people that need it the most. I feel ashamed to work for a business that treats their employees with so little respect. I feel ashamed to work for a business that proposes to pay neighbouring stores two separate rates of pay. I hope that there are others out there that feel the same and support this petition.

I hope that with the support of others, through signing this petition, we can influence B&Q and other businesses to reverse these changes. I also hope they acknowledge that treating people in this way will have a negative impact on their business in the future.

I've written this petition under a pseudonym to protect myself at work.

* I know I said I would boycott B&M, and I have done. That's not cutting of your nose, in my opinion because it's no effort to not go there. It's not a good store and it sells largely nasty tacky stuff, or goods you can get elsewhere, just as cheaply... Home Bargains, for example .

"AUTHORITY" EXISTS NOW FOR ITS OWN BENEFIT

I was looking through the blogs this morning and noticed that “Calling England” has a roundup of what’s in the Sunday papers. I’d only got a few lines down and was attracted to an article in the Mail (yes, the Mail on Sunday!!!), by Richard North.

It’s a long time since I felt such empathy, and for that empathy to come from an article in the hateful Mail on Sunday is, for me, quite eye opening.

Although his article is based on England, the story is the same in Scotland. He points out, that politicians, local authority “executives”, MPs, big business, indeed almost everyone and thing that crosses your path, no longer seems to have any interest in actually serving you. Their one motto in common seems to be “Let’s make money”.

We will all have stories of how we tried to deal with a big company, or with the local council, or with government, and found ourselves knocked back and stymied at every turn because no one cares. Everything seems to be done for the benefit of the management; nothing for the customer. And the more that we are described as customers (hospitals, where we used to be patients; jobcentres, where we used to be clients; councils where we used to be taxpayers), the less we are treated as such.

Once upon a time you could walk into a BT office and sort out service problems. Now it all has to be done by phone, which is, as I found out a few years ago when my phone line and internet service went down, rather difficult when you HAVE NO PHONE.

Eventually, of course, I contacted them on someone else’s phone, and when I pointed out the problems to the call centre person with, to me, an indecipherable northern English accent, she listened till I’d finished, ignored all I had said, and told me that I had to check some things myself. If they sent someone out there would be a £60 charge...

And if I cancelled my contract, there would also be a charge.

I understood that privatization was designed to provide us with competition which would lead to cheaper and better service. Wrong. It leads to people making more money and was designed to do such.

It’s the same with councils. Don’t try to get them to do anything for you. I’ve failed miserably. My emails are replied to with platitudes and no action. But people in management in the local council are scared of no one. It is difficult to sack anyone in the local authority, and once they are at management level almost nothing will budge them, and probably even then they will leave within with a hefty compensation package. They are compensated for being crap.

Try to get Dundee’s Director of Planning to do something about the fact that double parking in your street makes it impassable to fire engines and sometimes to ambulances. It’s his responsibility but does he give a damn? Does he hell? He’s got his OBE so he’s sorted.

They work on the basis that you aren’t “allowed” to see or talk to them face to face, and that after a while most people get fed up with sending emails or letters to no avail. As for Councillors...are they afraid of them? No. Councillors can’t do anything to them.

And these are but a few of the issues that we are having with "them". The postal office that introduced a new computer system in November (yes November), the bus company, based in Birmingham which cuts a complete service in the evening on one route and runs empty buses within minutes of each other on another, and tells you that you can easily take two buses to replace the one that they have cancelled.

It’s high time we made it clear to “authority” that it is US who are in authority and not them.

And if that means upturning a few egos and crushing them, so be it.

Do you have any stories like this? ... I bet you do.