The news on British Airways asking its workforce to work a month for free has popped up in the news again. I can’t help but feel that’s pretty unethical for them even to ask this of the lower paid sectors of the business.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re earning £200,000 a year or whether you’re on minimum wage, when it comes to your income, the first £1000 a month is your most important. That’s the bit that feeds, clothes and houses you. The second £1000 you earn is for fun or for better versions of the essentials but it’s beyond what you need. Any money beyond that is just to feed your self-worth and stop you leaving for another company.
The chief exec, Willie Walsh (who it turns out is NOT a character from the Beano, despite the name) is asking his staff to forego a month’s salary and he himself will do the same. Except he earns a further fifty nine of those cute little thousands every month. That means that in his first month of the financial year he has already covered his basics the next 6 years. The money received during the next 11 months of the year are nothing but fun and extras. I’d say someone like him can easily afford to forego a month’s salary. He has covered his life essentials in less than a week’s pay. Someone who is earning less than £14,000 on the other hand has not. In fact, after tax they don’t even clear that first grand a month, so BA is asking far more of them than of him. So that’s unethical for a start and it stinks. (I don’t work for BA by the way, but this riles me anyway).
Add to that, when the company is hit by hard times, it asks the people who work for it to take a hit, but when BA is having a surge of profit, do the lower paid sectors of the business get to enjoy bonuses? Not really. Bonus schemes are typical among higher paid positions and atypical in the lower. When times are good, the top benefit from the boom while the bottom do not. Also, during boom times, the salaries at the top get bigger but this does not always trickle down to lower sectors of a company. It’s a one-way street where this money is concerned.
I just think that Willie Walsh dropping a month’s salary compared to someone doing the same on only £14,000 a year is laughable. It’s so Marie Antoinette of him!
It’s like someone fasting of all food and water for 24 hours for a cause compared to someone giving up cake for a day. The two are not the same.
I’ve been doing lots more thinking about the current situation and talking with the Sous Chef and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is marvellous news that just sounded a bit scary.
Originally, the Sous Chef was going to work for one more year, save for that year and then, with that extra money put a loft extension in (no, I don’t know why, either) and then travel. That was the plan. The change of plan from this redundancy is that he doesn’t work until summer 2010 but that we go Feb 2010 and instead of the extra savings, we take the redundancy money to fund the trip. I also have a small nest egg that will give us enough to get by on for up to year upon our return to Blighty. It’s not enough for a comfortable year but its enough to ward off starvation in the event we can’t find work, which I’m sure we will of some sort.
The more I think about this, the less afraid I get. How many people ever get the chance to do something like this? How many people can just throw everything up in the air and go on an expedition around the world? Now’s the time to do it. Now is the time to do something with that wonderful thing called LIFE before it passes by. I loved the experience of cycling in India. I’m beginning to think The Sous Chef deliberately did that: choosing to go to India just to test my mettle and see whether I can cope with being on the road day in, day out in all that chaos – not to mention whether our relationship could take it.
At the moment our relationship is extremely strong so although it might well test us as a couple, I’m reasonably sure we can weather that. Our relationship started off a bit unstable for the first 6 months (I was insecure. I loved him to pieces but didn’t believe he could possibly love me back). Then I learned to trust him and we’ve been solid ever since. This relationship has changed me. We’ve not been together all that long. It feels like we’ve been together for decades and should be celebrating our silver wedding anniversary, but actually we’ve known each other only four and a half years and have been a couple for three and a half. We’ve been lovebirds all through that and have enormous respect for each other. I often feel this is the best relationship anyone could ever possibly hope to have. How we managed to make it this good is beyond me. Loving each other helps but it has to be more than that. There is something we do, some way we interact that works well for the other person, who then reciprocates. I know I can always rely on him being fair, being reasonable. I am often amazed at how fair and reasonable we can be even on issues we disagree on.
I have learned a lot from him. I’ve learned that it’s ok to have feelings, and that my opinions are worth something (I always used to keep both under wraps). I’ve learned that talking about something bothering you early is better than letting it go round and round your mind. You can build up some pretty hefty misconceptions and false logic given enough time to run in circles. I’ve found myself to have got the wrong end of the stick a few times. Most importantly, I have learned to trust him. My trust had been broken by a previous man and it took a while for me to be completely sure he really is a totally different animal to him. He has never done anything to hurt me nor given me reason to think he would. That trust I have in him (I don’t just mean in fidelity. I trust him to be to kind, to be fair, to be honest, to be there) is one ingredient in the glue that holds us together. I more than love him. I have deep respect for him. I have complete acceptance of him. I don’t think he is perfect but his imperfections are part of the whole package. My heart could not have chosen better.
ok, enough of the sappy stuff. I’d like to set up a website and/or blog to chart our progress, give the concerned friends and rellies a place to check where we are, what we’re doing and how it’s going. Suggestions for names of this blog and/or website would be greatly appreciated.
I can’t decide whether the news of the Sous Chef’s redundancy is bad news or good.
On the one hand, he wasn’t happy at his job and actually wants to go and do something completely different. He wants out of I.T. I can’t say I blame him. If I were to wave a magic wand and give him his ideal job I’d probably make him an abseiling instructor or something. That’s how I see him and he has a great manner with kids of various ages. Unfortunately there is a long queue of experienced scout leaders and youth workers who would be ahead of him. He has also never abseiled, as far as I know – but I still reckon he’d love that sort of job and be really good at it.
We can live on a smaller income than we’ve been on these past few years. It’s not as if we’ve been living at our means. We’ve lived below them for a while and as neither of us is into status symbols and don’t have kids to worry about it, we can live on a smaller income that many of his colleagues could. He earns quite well but we can live on less without it hurting too much.
But I’m afraid of this large, unknown future. When we go on our round-the-world bicycle trip we will be entirely unfettered and free which is great but also terrifying. Normally you go away but you have a home to go back to. When you’re done cycling about, you come home and carry on life as normal. This time around there is no job, potentially no house and what do you do then? We could go away, come back and – nothing. It feels like taking all the playing pieces off the board and having to start again.
That scares me. I don’t know why it should. I’ve done relocating to a new country clutching only one suitcase and cabin luggage several times before . I’ve started from almost zero a few times and somehow that can be very liberating and exciting, but I’ve always had a little bit of a safety net. There has always been a starting square, a roof over my head, someone to meet me at the airport. I’ve never looked a year into the future and seen me as just a bit of drift wood.
But here is our plan: The sous chef works until the end of August and I will continue with my job as normal. I finish my degree in January 2010 so we could actually begin our RTW (round the world) trip in February. I’ll quit my job (or beg for a sabbatical) and we cycle RTW for a year. We come back February 2011 maybe back to his house (if we haven’t sold it or are renting it out) and we both start looking for work. I’m supposed to do a career change into psychology around then and TSC has no idea what he’ll be doing. The idea is, I become the one with the greater earning potential. God knows how I’ll find work in this new field, but I am sure I could rely on my admin experience to get temp jobs or something for the first few months back in UK while I scout around for something in my new field.
It all just seems so unclear. Career change/address change/life change. I’m actually terrified.
The Sous Chef has had a visit from HR at his office today. That’s generally not a good sign, so I’m not hugely surprised by the news that his team are going to be either redeployed or made redundant.
He’s been at that job for more then ten years now and it’s been so convenient that he could cycle to work every day. He lives an easy 12 mile cycle ride away from his office. But more than that, we share our cycle routes as he cycles right past where I work. That means we get to cycle into work together like the love birds we are each morning and meet up to cycle home again at 5.30, just about every working day.
We also depend on his salary. I earn peanuts doing my admin job, as my contract is term time only and a mere 30 hours per week at that. My monthly pay packet is a three figure sum. If he can’t find something that pays reasonably, I’ll probably have to quit my job to find something better paid. It suited me for its easy working hours, while I concentrated on studies. It’s not enough to live on.
But I don’t feel bleak about the news of the Sous Chef’s redundancy. He hasn’t enjoyed his job for years and the only reason he hasn’t already left is because he’s supporting me through my degree before we go on our world trip on our bikes next year. He decided to stay in his reasonably well paid job despite hating it in order to build up a travel fund for our trip. He’s been putting away half his salary every month toward that. I have also been saving half of my earnings (yes, one half peanut every month) to be the cushion for when we return. I hope we don’t have to dip into that to live on. We can live quite frugally, since we don’t run a car.
At least it’s a job he hates. I’ve been made redundant quite a few times and it’s always been a good thing in hindsight. The uncertainty is nervewracking but opportunities come up. I’ve never lost a job I shouldn’t have jacked in already anyway. I’ve always gone on to do better and more interesting things. It’s a bit like being a plant and not realising you needed repotting.
But the uncertainty IS neverwracking. We can’t just up and and go travelling until my exams are finished. I don’t complete my final course for my BSc until January. That is the earliest we can go.
I haven’t had a long chat with him yet about what next or how he feels about it. I should think he has mixed feelings about this as I do. I have to admit, despite an optimistic bent, I also feel a bit frightened.
