Aha - a Waterworld Graduate sticks his head above the parapet
BAB2B
The whole point of bringing in such people (of which I'm one) into all industries is that we're supposed to inject a bit of energy and new ideas
Well, if you got out a bit more from all your 'meetings' at Waterworld and actually found out how the operation worked you may have some better 'new ideas' - The company policy of moving managers around every couple of years means that we see these new managers come and go, all with their 'new ideas' and if you stay in the same department long enough you eventually get the same 'new ideas' come along as we had about 10 years ago.
I totally agree that the 'operation' is not rocket science - however there is no point blaming the unions for c**p management - management gets the union response it deserves.
I also don't know where you get the idea of
decades of errosion of management power
Were you still in school when we had Thatchers employment restructuring in the 80's?
I am perfectly happy to put forward ideas about how I would run things - however management are not interested if it doesn't agree with their own ideas. As an example, my department is overmanned in management grades by 100% - I would pay the surplus off and get rid of them. Mismanagements answer is to put them on 'projects' and keep them on the payrole.
The latest 'new idea' that we have concerns the way that mismanagement are now concerned at the low morale at some stations - rather than look at the causes (mismanagement?) we now have a proposal to give staff 'motivational' training.
I give up.