Sunday, October 19, 2003
Anyway, so on Thursday we were on strike from work, as part of the UNISON campaign for an increase in London Weighting pay so that the capitals public sector workers can afford to live in the capital. After a lot of prevaricating and deciding that I wasn't going to go to the march in the centre of London I had a change of heart and toddled along. This wasn't out of any great swell of enthusiasm (indeed Thursdays strike was leaving me out of pocket in two ways, which I'll explain in a minute) but more that it fit in with my plans for the day so I didn't see the harm in giving it a go. I was annoyed because, while I accepted that I would of course loose a days pay for striking, it turned out that I couldn't claim the full hours that I would have been working on my flexisheet. Libraries have to use the same flexihours system that the majority of the council uses. But while most office workers have the freedom to walk in at say 9:15 rather than 9:00, just so long as they make it up by doing 15 minutes extra elsewhere, because we work with the public and have to open the library doors at a specific time, we don't have that freedom. We have one day off during the week and as we work alternate Saturdays one week we will work four days of that week, and the next we will work five days. We have to work 35 hours a week like office staff. Due to that Saturday, one week we work 34 hours, the next we work 36, so it evens out over the fortnight. HOWEVER, when it comes to holiday it gets really fun...
If you work in an office and you take a week off, each day is filled in as 7 hours 12 minutes, because 5 lots of them adds up to 36 hours and so you neither gain nor loose anything for that week. If you work in a library and you're taking a five day week off then you're okay. If you're taking a four day week off you have a choice. You can either be 7 hours 12 minutes down for a week, or you give up a day of your leave allowance (which effectively means you're taking a day that you wouldn't have been working anyway as leave) to make it tally. If you want to take one day off and it happens to be a day when you'd be working late (ie: until 8:00 pm rather than 5:00 pm) you don't get to claim the 10 hours that you would have worked, you only get 7 hours 12 minutes. If you're sick you at least get to put down on your flexi-sheet what hours you should have worked. But I found out last week that if you go on a UNISON strike on a day when your library would have closed at 8:00 pm, you can only put down on your flexisheet 7 hours 12 minutes.
Now, you could argue that we all have to make sacrifices in our struggle for a fair wage from Government. Okay, fine, I have no problem with that, I'm giving up a days wages after all. But my colleagues from other departments in the council weren't falling short in the accounting of their hours, which means I've got to work extra hours next week to make them up. I'm already in the flexi-red because I took a four day week off in August and refused to give up a leave day to make it a five day week, I refuse to be penalised for days when our service isn't open anyway. At Christmas I'm going to end up owing the library about seven hours time, because we'll be closed on Christmas Day and New Years Day, which will fall on late nights, so I'll only be claiming 7 hours 12 minutes again, despite the fact that the libraries won't be open so it's not like I'm unwilling to work (well, I would be unwilling but you get my point).
Anyway, rant over. We were meeting outside Temple station on the tube, so I went there and came out expecting a handfull of people, most of whom would be there only to try and sell copies of 'Socialist Worker'. Instead there were a couple of hundred at least, maybe more. Alright, not the huge numbers of the Anti-War demos, rather a small proportion of the staff that were on strike. But I found other staff from the council and when someone at the front worked out what they were doing we were off. We walked along the Embankment, over Blackfriars Bridge, down into Southwark, then along to Saint George's Circus then finally to Lambeth Road and the Park beside the Imperial War Museum. Seeing me taking pictures along the way the secretary of the council UNISON branch siddled up and asked if he could have copies later on, as no-one from his office had thought to bring their camera.
As is typical at these things once in the park we were all milling around slightly aimlessly. The Socialist Worker sellers from Temple tube station hadn't marched of course and seemed to have driven there so they could wait for us and try and get us to buy their papers. There was a little stage set up and some speakers which I half-listened to, clapping in the appropriate places. We cheered when we were told that the meeting today had broken up with no agreement when the Local Government heads had withdrawn their 'desultory' offer which only covered the very worst off, we applauded when it was announced that the GMB, which had been intending to settle with Local Government had instead decided to ballot it's members about returning to strike as well and we booed when everyone on stage mentioned each time that it cost £55 000 for a house in London, far beyond the means of Local Government workers. With these things once you've heard one speech you've truly heard them all, they just mix the order in which they say things. They probably write these speeches beforehand like the cut-up technique David Bowie used to write some of his songs, write the important phrases down on strips of paper and then shuffle them into a random order and copy it down.
I'd been intending to go to the Imperial War Museum anyway, so this was ideal opportunity and I popped in once the rally was over. It was lunchtime, so I knew I couldn't stay too long, so ignored most of the free stuff and just went for the Women and War exhibition. I personally found it a bit disappointing but I think that's my prejudices coming to the fore. They've certainly got a lot of stuff on display, though a costume belonging to Catherine the Great hadn't yet arrived. Included in the price of the exhibition is one of those phone things which you dial and hear short tracks about some of the exhibits, such as pictures of women who ran off to fight in the American Civil War (and to think I'd recently been reading Monstrous Regiment too!) a copy of the only surviving wax cylinder recording of Florence Nightingale as a very old woman, war recollections from all sides and more up to date things too.
I suppose that as it is the Imperial War Museum it's to be expected that the exhibition would concentrate on WW1 and 2, most of the space was given to two large rooms full of exhibitions, posters, dummys wearing clothes from those periods. I was personally more interested in everything else, the small cabinet in which Florence Nightingale's uniform fought for space with exhibits to do with Mary Seacole, a black nurse who, when turned down by Nightingale went closer to the frontline of the Crimean war to give what medical aid she could to the injured and dying, or the exhibits of the suffragettes. Irritatingly the room after the end of WW2, the liberation of the concetration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima was for everything else since, all conflict up to the Falklands represented by a handful of photo's on the bare wall, then we had a female war reporters kit from that campaign, and the letter Ronald Reagan sent Maggie Thatcher when he left office, thanking her for her help. There seemed to be a shortage of material for the post WW2 era, so we had a cabinet of dummies wearing camoflage crop tops, showing how fashion has been influenced by war chic, then some mention given to anti-war demonstrations and womens groups such as the one at Greenham Common. It all looked as if it was thrown together in a rather haphazard manner, there was a photo of Leila Khaled on a wall, but on dialing the number next to it I heard a BBC report of the first female suicide bombing in Israel from a short time ago.
The only continuity was that of the calender, the American civil war girls were next to a large portrait of Queen Victoria, who was there it seemed only because she was wearing a military uniform in her portrait. Next to her nurses Nightingale and Seacole, then the suffragettes, then Mata Hari and the first war. Perhaps a themed approach along the lines of direct involvement in war and supporting industries might have helped cover the shortages in the collection, though that itself might have introduced different incoherences in the collection.
If you don't mind the concentration on the Great Wars or you have a misconception that wars until recently were just for the boys then this exhibition will be an eye-opener. I did enjoy it somewhat and will probably go back at some point to see the rest of the museum.
If you work in an office and you take a week off, each day is filled in as 7 hours 12 minutes, because 5 lots of them adds up to 36 hours and so you neither gain nor loose anything for that week. If you work in a library and you're taking a five day week off then you're okay. If you're taking a four day week off you have a choice. You can either be 7 hours 12 minutes down for a week, or you give up a day of your leave allowance (which effectively means you're taking a day that you wouldn't have been working anyway as leave) to make it tally. If you want to take one day off and it happens to be a day when you'd be working late (ie: until 8:00 pm rather than 5:00 pm) you don't get to claim the 10 hours that you would have worked, you only get 7 hours 12 minutes. If you're sick you at least get to put down on your flexi-sheet what hours you should have worked. But I found out last week that if you go on a UNISON strike on a day when your library would have closed at 8:00 pm, you can only put down on your flexisheet 7 hours 12 minutes.
Now, you could argue that we all have to make sacrifices in our struggle for a fair wage from Government. Okay, fine, I have no problem with that, I'm giving up a days wages after all. But my colleagues from other departments in the council weren't falling short in the accounting of their hours, which means I've got to work extra hours next week to make them up. I'm already in the flexi-red because I took a four day week off in August and refused to give up a leave day to make it a five day week, I refuse to be penalised for days when our service isn't open anyway. At Christmas I'm going to end up owing the library about seven hours time, because we'll be closed on Christmas Day and New Years Day, which will fall on late nights, so I'll only be claiming 7 hours 12 minutes again, despite the fact that the libraries won't be open so it's not like I'm unwilling to work (well, I would be unwilling but you get my point).
Anyway, rant over. We were meeting outside Temple station on the tube, so I went there and came out expecting a handfull of people, most of whom would be there only to try and sell copies of 'Socialist Worker'. Instead there were a couple of hundred at least, maybe more. Alright, not the huge numbers of the Anti-War demos, rather a small proportion of the staff that were on strike. But I found other staff from the council and when someone at the front worked out what they were doing we were off. We walked along the Embankment, over Blackfriars Bridge, down into Southwark, then along to Saint George's Circus then finally to Lambeth Road and the Park beside the Imperial War Museum. Seeing me taking pictures along the way the secretary of the council UNISON branch siddled up and asked if he could have copies later on, as no-one from his office had thought to bring their camera.
As is typical at these things once in the park we were all milling around slightly aimlessly. The Socialist Worker sellers from Temple tube station hadn't marched of course and seemed to have driven there so they could wait for us and try and get us to buy their papers. There was a little stage set up and some speakers which I half-listened to, clapping in the appropriate places. We cheered when we were told that the meeting today had broken up with no agreement when the Local Government heads had withdrawn their 'desultory' offer which only covered the very worst off, we applauded when it was announced that the GMB, which had been intending to settle with Local Government had instead decided to ballot it's members about returning to strike as well and we booed when everyone on stage mentioned each time that it cost £55 000 for a house in London, far beyond the means of Local Government workers. With these things once you've heard one speech you've truly heard them all, they just mix the order in which they say things. They probably write these speeches beforehand like the cut-up technique David Bowie used to write some of his songs, write the important phrases down on strips of paper and then shuffle them into a random order and copy it down.
I'd been intending to go to the Imperial War Museum anyway, so this was ideal opportunity and I popped in once the rally was over. It was lunchtime, so I knew I couldn't stay too long, so ignored most of the free stuff and just went for the Women and War exhibition. I personally found it a bit disappointing but I think that's my prejudices coming to the fore. They've certainly got a lot of stuff on display, though a costume belonging to Catherine the Great hadn't yet arrived. Included in the price of the exhibition is one of those phone things which you dial and hear short tracks about some of the exhibits, such as pictures of women who ran off to fight in the American Civil War (and to think I'd recently been reading Monstrous Regiment too!) a copy of the only surviving wax cylinder recording of Florence Nightingale as a very old woman, war recollections from all sides and more up to date things too.
I suppose that as it is the Imperial War Museum it's to be expected that the exhibition would concentrate on WW1 and 2, most of the space was given to two large rooms full of exhibitions, posters, dummys wearing clothes from those periods. I was personally more interested in everything else, the small cabinet in which Florence Nightingale's uniform fought for space with exhibits to do with Mary Seacole, a black nurse who, when turned down by Nightingale went closer to the frontline of the Crimean war to give what medical aid she could to the injured and dying, or the exhibits of the suffragettes. Irritatingly the room after the end of WW2, the liberation of the concetration camps and the bombing of Hiroshima was for everything else since, all conflict up to the Falklands represented by a handful of photo's on the bare wall, then we had a female war reporters kit from that campaign, and the letter Ronald Reagan sent Maggie Thatcher when he left office, thanking her for her help. There seemed to be a shortage of material for the post WW2 era, so we had a cabinet of dummies wearing camoflage crop tops, showing how fashion has been influenced by war chic, then some mention given to anti-war demonstrations and womens groups such as the one at Greenham Common. It all looked as if it was thrown together in a rather haphazard manner, there was a photo of Leila Khaled on a wall, but on dialing the number next to it I heard a BBC report of the first female suicide bombing in Israel from a short time ago.
The only continuity was that of the calender, the American civil war girls were next to a large portrait of Queen Victoria, who was there it seemed only because she was wearing a military uniform in her portrait. Next to her nurses Nightingale and Seacole, then the suffragettes, then Mata Hari and the first war. Perhaps a themed approach along the lines of direct involvement in war and supporting industries might have helped cover the shortages in the collection, though that itself might have introduced different incoherences in the collection.
If you don't mind the concentration on the Great Wars or you have a misconception that wars until recently were just for the boys then this exhibition will be an eye-opener. I did enjoy it somewhat and will probably go back at some point to see the rest of the museum.
