10th April 2010, 01:40 PM
BAJR - how is unionisation going to protect diggers' jobs? If a company hasn't got any fieldwork on then keeping a load of diggers on the books is just going to send the firm into bankruptcy, isn't it? The firms who seem to have kept their heads above water best during the recent downturn do seem to be the ones who hire staff on a single-project basis and were hence best-placed to down-size directly in response to the decline in workload.
Having been employing around 4 times as many diggers as 'normal' for the last 12 months the firm I work for is currently down-sizing to a more sustainable level painlessly just by their contracts running out (actually most of them have had extensions since last year's big jobs have all over-run) - no one seems too upset, they always knew that the time would come to move on and they've all had their fun and made a shed-load of money in the meantime (despite any winges you may have received from certain individuals). Sadly digging is always going to be a boom-bust occupation, unless you can somehow get the construction industry to even-out their activities, or at least do jobs when they said they were going to, to allow for rather better advance workforce planning.
Having been employing around 4 times as many diggers as 'normal' for the last 12 months the firm I work for is currently down-sizing to a more sustainable level painlessly just by their contracts running out (actually most of them have had extensions since last year's big jobs have all over-run) - no one seems too upset, they always knew that the time would come to move on and they've all had their fun and made a shed-load of money in the meantime (despite any winges you may have received from certain individuals). Sadly digging is always going to be a boom-bust occupation, unless you can somehow get the construction industry to even-out their activities, or at least do jobs when they said they were going to, to allow for rather better advance workforce planning.