Here today, gone tomorrow

This week we received a great lesson in the power of solidarity. Every year we have a salary review at work. The first step is negotiations between the employer and the union. Once agreement has been reached, an offer is put to each employee based on the agreement reached between the employer and the union. Usually it's a flat rate across the whole company. In years gone by we then had a short interview with our group manager to be formally presented with the offer. Last year we just received an email saying what the agreed union offer was and if anyone wanted to negotiate further they should meet with their group manager. That's the way my company works. I understand that other companies have different methods. It's not something that I really concern myself with as we have a relatively comfortable life today.

Moving on now. This year, one of our technical groups in the office decided that their offered salary increase was not acceptable. So they had a bit of a chat about it together and decided to jointly reject the employer's offer. The office manager listened to their concerns and then told them that the offer was the offer and, if they didn't like that, then they knew where the door was.

Turns out that they all knew exactly where the door was.

In a classic game of Chicken whch went horribly wrong, the entire technical group resigned on mass and accepted positions with one of our rival companies. 8 people, and the entire technical expertise for one critical branch of our business portfolio, walked out that very door. One person you can probably do without, 2 you can juggle the work around. But 8 at once brings things to a screaming halt.

Losing an entire technical team at once is not something that goes unoticed. This all happened while I was away in Kiruna for the day but in the days since I haven't seen a single manager in our building. I suspect they have been called to a "Please Explain" meeting with their superiors. I hope their explanation is a good one.