blueskythinking
me me me me - i can only apologise for causing the worst recession in living memory!! There was me thinking it was predominantly caused by sub prime borrowing in the US and over leveraged buyouts of dotcom companies! I will immediately seek out my union rep ( will be fairly easy as he will be in our management suite ) and offer to increase my subscriptions. Alternatively I could continue to view things from a more realistic viewpoint and see that once again our union ( and yes it is my union too as I suspect I have spent at least as long as you funding it as well as five years as a rep ) have been conned by a slippery management team. Am I the only one who has noticed our reps answering every question with a sentence beginning with ' so ' . Now who else does that??
I said people
like you, not you. The recession would appear to have been caused by sub-prime lending and over-inflated share pricing etc. The common theme is greed. Investors, bankers, executives etc all wanting something for nothing and contributing to an ever-expanding bubble in order to line their own pockets, with no regard to the long term effects when that bubble finally burst.
You find yourself being offered a tidy chunk of change, on top of a good salary, to turn up for training on a day off that you will also be given back to take later... All this at a time of global financial turmoil and significant cost-cutting. No really something to be complaining about is it.
For what it's worth, I've also had my issues with how our reps at a central level have handled things. I believe they were out-played on the pension debate and also rather gullible on the last pay deal. I am a rep though, so I also sympathise with what a difficult job it can be at times.