ChristmasIsACominYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Urg, I hate working this time of year. 4/5 of the population has taken leave and the mine is a ghost town… well on surface anyway, underground is still a hive of activity. You see we are developing a new section of the mine complete with massive new crusher and 50ton trucks that race around an underground circuit at 40km/h without a driver… scary. Anyway, said new section is supposed to be up and operational by the end of January, a task that is looking pretty much impossible at the moment. This means that there is no rest for the wicked or the migrant labour who want to take their one opportunity of the year to go home and be with their family. I’m realising more and more that we truly are the evil empire. No contractor’s holiday for them. Apparently the whole thing is political, as such things tend to be, and apparently at the end of the day it is their own, read: the union’s, fault, but still. Initially they were required to work for the entire period, excluding public holidays, but at least now they have been given a special concession to leave on Christmas eve and only come back on the 3rd. Unfortunately the workforce weren’t happy with this and last Friday (15th) they collected their payslip and 65% didn’t return on Monday. I have never seen so many ‘makuluskop’ that angry, I thought the mining manager was going to spontaneously combust. What the real problem is, is that technically they could all be fired on the spot for AWOL, but then we would have no one to do the work and we definitely won’t be finished by January. On the other hand, tis the season etc. so we could just let them off, but that is hardly fair on the guys who came to work and then we loose any authority they had. Right now I am just very, very glad that I am an outsider looking in. In happier news, |