London’s on edge. There’s tension in the air. It’s as if a fight’s going to break out at any minute. It can be seen on the grim faces in the streets and heard in the aggressive tone of the conversations in pubs. You see, the economic downturn has exasperated the ‘us and them’ situation, us being the employees, and them, the big bosses. And the rumour among us workers is that our masters are taking advantage of this recession, making redundancies (the euphemism for being fired) under the guise of essential cost cutting, so they can get rid of the people they don’t like. The rebels, or clock-watchers as ‘they’ call them, you know, the ones who stand up for themselves and have a life.
The powers that be have also introduced the pay freeze, which is forecast to last for at least the next 6 months. And this, along with the firings, has meant that us workers have had to take on more work for the same money, without the hope of a bonus or pay rise. We can’t move jobs, as the big bosses have worked together to come up with a cunning plan in the form of the no hiring mandate, which orders that there can’t be any hirings after a firing for, yes you’ve guessed it, at least the next 6 months. So we’re trapped into doing more work for the same wage, and made to think that we’re just lucky to still have a job.
And through it all we’ve kept our heads down without saying a word like the good little workers we’re supposed to be, for fear of being put in the firing line ourselves and having a black mark against our names, turning us into ‘untouchables’ or outcasts, meaning it’d be hard to get another decent job. But now we’ve had enough, and last Monday signalled the beginning of the uprising. Yes, we’ve begun to play them at their own game. If they’ve been taking advantage of the worst recession in 30 years, then we were going to use the worst snowfall in London for 20 years as an excuse to have a day off work to spend with family and friends.
And what a great day it was. We all reverted back to being kids, naughtily skiving off school, while every street and park became a playground as communities made snowmen and threw snowballs at each other. One of the best things about it was that us workers did it together. There was solidarity. It was a day where we all stood up against ‘them’. Many of us stayed at home to have fun in the snow, even those who could have made it in, as their commute wasn’t really disrupted. And the strength in numbers weakened the big bosses’ power, as they couldn’t penalise scores of the workforce – apparently a fifth of Britain’s workers didn’t make it into the office.
Yes it’s the worst recession for 30 years and the worst snowfall in 20, but we’ve also just had the best Monday in living memory. So they can keep their Black Monday, because we’ll always have our white one.
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