Honda

I now am on an enforced break for 4 months, I don’t work at Honda but the company I do work for relies on them for about 99% of our work.

Today (Friday) was a really bad day at work because in spite of Honda’s claims that no one is being made forcible redundant, the same cant be said for those company’s that keep Honda making cars.
Today I saw many of my work colleges being escorted from the building, not to return. They face a very gloomy future in this town because if your looking for a warehouse or drivers job, you will be looking for a long time and forming a very long queue if you are lucky enough to find a vacancy.

All of this week the usual faces seen in my normal daily routine have been disappearing as other company’s in the same position as ours make their staff redundant too.

We had a visit from ‘Jobseekers plus ‘ (I think the ‘plus’ bit means the added bullshit just isn’t hidden), this week to assist those that faced redundancy and advice what benefits and help they could expect. I will sum up what that means…. not a lot and little. The world of the jobcentre and unemployment is a world unknown to me and to be honest I don’t care to look too deeply into its murky sad door.
But as I said earlier, many of my fellow workers will be in that world now, not because they did something wrong, not because they were lazy, not because they didn’t conform to rules or failed to do their best. No they lost their jobs through no fault of their own and a thing that was given a name that sounded innocuous and something greedy bastard bankers had to concern themselves before we did…. the credit crunch.

I am one of the lucky ones, for 2 months at least I am paid for being at home.
Many good, decent people today are now in a situation that no one could have foreseen as early as 6 months ago.

From boomtown to gloom town in less than a year.