Still working here, don't have a choice in the matter. I'd like to be off, and earning 80% of my usual income, but that won't happen unless a shutdown for manufacturing that is't related to food, PPE etc is mandatory.

Same here, except its stuff for "Going Upstairs" on an Arriene (or similar) Launch platform!

---

Still working here, don't have a choice in the matter. I'd like to be off, and earning 80% of my usual income, but that won't happen unless a shutdown for manufacturing that is't related to food, PPE etc is mandatory.

Well yes, the only reason I haven't been furloughed are the essential bits and pieces mentioned above, this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in. From a personal perspective I'd probably prefer to be off on 80% than burning through my holiday allowance when i can't go anywhere....

On the other hand though whilst people are going broke, falling ill and even dying it doesn't seem quite right to make too much of a fuss about some missed holidays. If we manage to come out of this with the company still operating in the UK and all our staff still employed then I'll be happy enough.

….this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in...

That seems a little one-sided; and very reasonable of you. They can't have it all ways...

They should send you home on 80% and ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours.

I'd be tempted to tell them to ram it. :curse:

---

….this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in...

They should send you home on 80% and ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours.

Can't do that. If you go into work during furlough the government won't pay
You are straight up furloughed, or you aren't. Nothing in the middle.

Still working here, don't have a choice in the matter. I'd like to be off, and earning 80% of my usual income, but that won't happen unless a shutdown for manufacturing that is't related to food, PPE etc is mandatory.

Well yes, the only reason I haven't been furloughed are the essential bits and pieces mentioned above, this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in. From a personal perspective I'd probably prefer to be off on 80% than burning through my holiday allowance when i can't go anywhere....

On the other hand though whilst people are going broke, falling ill and even dying it doesn't seem quite right to make too much of a fuss about some missed holidays. If we manage to come out of this with the company still operating in the UK and all our staff still employed then I'll be happy enough.

Slightly different for me.
I'm a transport manager, if I'm furloughed HGV operations have to cease
Company won't survive without the ability to deliver with lorries so I stay were I am.
I'm also supposed to self isolate because I'm not the worlds healthiest bloke, trouble with that is the Traffic Commissioners require me to turn up to work, longer than 14 days off and I have to submit a plan to them how we operate without me..

Compromise is that I go in to work in the early hours while there are very few people about and work from home once everybody else starts arriving at the factory

However, I still have a job, as do half of my drivers and a third of the production staff. After the apocalypse most or all of the jobs should be saved with a little luck
A week or to ago the survival of the company and a couple of hundred jobs was more than a little bit shaky.

The company will survive Coronavirus, so will many of the jobs. Maybe not in quite the shape it was but that's all a bit vague for the moment.

I have a moral obligation to work (stop laughing at the back, I do have morals!), partly to help protect the livelyhoods of those who work with me and partly because we are an essential food supplier to several dozen hospitals and several of the Nightingale Hospitals.

All in all, I'd rather be home on 80% pay too, but the world isn't like that.
I'll take the agro for the moment, it'll be worth it on the other side. Probably 😉

….this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in...

They should send you home on 80% and ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours.

Can't do that. If you go into work during furlough the government won't pay
You are straight up furloughed, or you aren't. Nothing in the middle.

".....ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours."

No one need know, if you 'voluntarily' wander in now and then

;)

---

….this takes me probably about 4 hours each week. Since I'm not furloughed I've been asked to use my holiday allowance for the days I don't have to go in...

They should send you home on 80% and ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours.

Can't do that. If you go into work during furlough the government won't pay
You are straight up furloughed, or you aren't. Nothing in the middle.

".....ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours."

No one need know, if you 'voluntarily' wander in now and then

;)

Yeah, they won't do that. It's a big Canadian company, they play with a very straight bat.....

We've had the same furlough problem with our cleaning contractor, since the site is technically still open with the odd person coming in for a few hours every now and again I wanted to cut the cleaning down from daily to once a week. Not really possible, it's all or nothing, so at the moment it's nothing and we are cleaning up after ourselves (sort of :confused: ).

I think we'll all be back in the short term but I'm less convinced in the long term, we were set up to be the companies European base/training centre and we are somewhat of an extravagance in our current form. There are many signs people are looking at where the costs are.....

As I can no longer go digging underground, over the weekend I had to resort to rebuilding a rockery - that underground drystone wall building experience finally came in handy.

I think we'll all be back in the short term but I'm less convinced in the long term, we were set up to be the companies European base/training centre and we are somewhat of an extravagance in our current form. There are many signs people are looking at where the costs are.....

I wouldn't be so sure.

The myths about the effectiveness of offshoring production have been well and truly busted over the last few weeks

I would expect to see a very heavy focus on supply chain resilience post apocalypse.
Many of the changes to come are probably a good think for British manufacturing.
More manufacturing will return to europe and the UK after this, especially as more of the supply chain skullduggery comes to light.

Chinese manufacturing is likely to become very unpopular over the summer.
A lot of very big money operations were grinding to a halt over supply chain issues before Kung Flu went global

Getting back to the mine in the garden thing.

Back in the early 90s I was a post grad at Bournemouth Uni. At weekends I used to play trains at a little village called Corfe Mullen where a madman called Tim Shelton had a two foot gauge railway in his garden. Said madman had also sunk a twenty foot shaft in his garden and was mining sand which he used in his business as a garden contractor. From the foot of the shaft he had driven a level out towards the edge of his property. When I first went down the mine something looked a bit wrong, the level looked too long. Measuring the level I found that the maniac had tunnelled out under his boundary and under the neighbours house. Needless to say the level was back filled asap but could you imagine the insurance claim if the neighbours house had subsided!

".....ask you very nicely to come in for the 4 hours."

No one need know, if you 'voluntarily' wander in now and then

;)

If they are anything like our place, its taken a week or two to get through the confusion!
We initially sent 140 staff off home without pay, we couldn't commit to furlough until the details came through from the government.
We simply couldn't finance payroll indefinitely without the government commitment being confirmed

Nobody wanted to do it (from the chief exec down) but there was little choice.

Personally I've had to make a lot of really uncomfortable decisions this month, many of them I'm not happy with. I've knocked off a lot of agency drivers in the midlands who were on temp to perm contracts and due to be employees this month, I've pulled that rug on them and I genuinely didn't want to.

I can't speak for Ttexla's employers but in our place we've simply had to focus on the business surviving and doing the best we can for our people within that context.
We lost 60% of our revenue within 48 hours of lockdown and had to restructure rapidly to remain anywhere near viable.

The next trick is when the furlough scheme ends, then we'll be looking at the big question of whether revenue recovers quick enough to bring everyone back to work.

The normal practice of trying to the best you can by your people isn't necessarily going to be possible anymore.
I suspect Ttexla is viewing his employer in that light, some of the choices being made are crap but there aren't really many choices to be had.

Getting back to the mine in the garden thing.

Back in the early 90s I was a post grad at Bournemouth Uni. At weekends I used to play trains at a little village called Corfe Mullen where a madman called Tim Shelton had a two foot gauge railway in his garden. Said madman had also sunk a twenty foot shaft in his garden and was mining sand which he used in his business as a garden contractor. From the foot of the shaft he had driven a level out towards the edge of his property. When I first went down the mine something looked a bit wrong, the level looked too long. Measuring the level I found that the maniac had tunnelled out under his boundary and under the neighbours house. Needless to say the level was back filled asap but could you imagine the insurance claim if the neighbours house had subsided!

There is a coal mine in Cumbria were a certain area was only worked when the residents in the farmhouse above weren't home

You could apparently hear their television from underground if they were at home :blink:

I think we'll all be back in the short term but I'm less convinced in the long term, we were set up to be the companies European base/training centre and we are somewhat of an extravagance in our current form. There are many signs people are looking at where the costs are.....

I wouldn't be so sure.

The myths about the effectiveness of offshoring production have been well and truly busted over the last few weeks

I would expect to see a very heavy focus on supply chain resilience post apocalypse.
Many of the changes to come are probably a good think for British manufacturing.
More manufacturing will return to europe and the UK after this, especially as more of the supply chain skullduggery comes to light.

Chinese manufacturing is likely to become very unpopular over the summer.
A lot of very big money operations were grinding to a halt over supply chain issues before Kung Flu went global

Agree. Apart from Globalisation and JIT management planned obsolescence will need to be considered more sensibly.
The throw away culture has gone a little too far.

Agree. Apart from Globalisation and JIT management planned obsolescence will need to be considered more sensibly.
The throw away culture has gone a little too far.

I think the stark realisation that China started buying up western supplies of PPE and delaying shipments out before they informed the world that Kung Flu was coming may change peoples perspectives.
Before the shutdown Jaguar Land Rover were reduced to bringing electronic components out of China is suitcases on commercial flights.
Shipments of PPE though europe have been stopped and held by the French and Germans who had instructions to sieze loads. The Foreign Office had to intervene several times to get shipments released.

The world has changed immeasurably in the last month.

The world has changed immeasurably in the last month.

You are not wring there Sir, it will take several years before we reach any kind of economic recovery.

I suspect that many workplaces will look long and hard at just how many people are employed in an on-site role, beyond those of us at the "sharp end" most folk who fly a desk could continue to do so beyond the end of all of this ****!!

---