PAY RISE FOR SOME P45S FOR SHARED SERVICES WORKERS

17/07/09        Evening Standard

Sir John Parker is the latest part-time director to notch up to GBP600,000 a year, few-days-a-month, chairmanship after a 11% pay rise at National Grid.  Other highly paid part timers claim their huge salaries are based on the amount of time they actually have to spend at their troublesome companies.  But as one of the great ultra-defensive, low risk investment stocks, National Grid, arguably as good as runs itself.

17/07/09        Daily Mail

National Grid boss Steve Holliday collected a GBP2.2m pay package last year, it emerged – as possible strike action looms over the pipes and pylons group.  It marked a GBP144,000 increase on last year and included a GBP1.3m bonus.  Holliday’s base salary of GBP917,000 was unchanged because he and other executive directors voluntarily decided to forgo pay hikes 

National Grid has come under attack in recent days for plans to outsource jobs.   Workers at its office in Newcastle are to be balloted on strike action in protest jobs being sent to India.

21/07/09        As reported in the Metro

A high court judge has criticized National Grid’s attempts to recover all the £5.267m it  sought in compensation at a recent case in the High Court, together with costs exceeding £4m.  The company were seeking compensation from a project engineer Mr Andrew McKenzie  and his co-conspirator  Mr Read, who were found to have taken bribes in return for labour contracts at the electrics giant and siphoning off of nearly £1m.  In judgement Mr Justice Norris ordered  Mr Andrew McKenzie to pay £1.4m plus an additional £500,000 in costs towards National Grid’s investigation .  However, in his summing up  the Judge then went onto say that National Grid had thrown money at the case and  'It was more about the relentless pursuit of Mr McKenzie and Mr Read and about the vindication of National Grid's management team than it was about the recovery of compensation.'

Pull plug on this National Greed

31/07/09 The Mirror

By Paul Routledge

What did you do during the Great Recession, Mr Privatised Power Industry boss? "I sacked people!" he chortled. "I off-shored their jobs to India and made them redundant to max up my fat cat pay and my company's multi-billion profits!" Such would be the storyline if the cruel drama now being played out at National Greed (aka Grid) ever gets on the stage.

The grid was built with taxpayers' money to bring electricity to our homes, but these days it's one of the most lucrative privatised monopolies on earth. For the bosses and shareholders, that is.

Global profits to March 31 were £2,914million, up 12% on the previous year. Its top executives can afford Ferraris - and stable them in a "hotel for fine automobiles".

Despite wallowing in untold wealth, National Greed wants to sack 189 staff in its Newcastle upon Tyne IT offices and export the work to India.

For some businesses, the credit crunch has been a golden - quite literally - opportunity to make more money. But this must be the most outrageous example of a filthy-rich employer using the recession to cut costs, sack workers and boost profits. The workers in Newcastle are not taking this assault on their livelihood lying down. They're currently voting in ballots held by their unions - GMB, Unite and Unison - and a day of action on September 11 plus a demonstration in the city looks certain.

It's a grim choice. Strike, and you may well be sacked. Do nothing, and you get made redundant. This is supposed to be Great Britain, year 2009.

It's not that great for Britons. Two hundred years since working people got together to fight for jobs and conditions of employment, we're still virtually powerless when confronted by the brute power of Big Money.

Danish firm Vestas is calling in bailiffs to evict sit-in workers at its Isle of Wight turbine factory, after sending letters of dismissal in with their pizzas. The British Council is offshoring more than 100 jobs to India, heralding a drive to slash public-sector employment.

One horror story follows another, as the harsh reality of life at work is exposed by the recession. We have fewer rights than fellow workers in Europe, and the leaders of all the main political parties are in thrall to business chiefs.

Only our unions stand between us and the tyranny of unregulated capital. We need them now more than ever, as the Vestas workers discovered. The politicians did nothing. Only Bob Crow's RMT union came to their aid.

Bob may be a stroppy devil, but he's our stroppy devil and he gets his rag out for the right reasons. I wish more would do the same.