CHARNWOOD ELASTICS - MORE PROBLEMS

The daily work routine was bad enough in itself but after 3-4 years on the job things got even worse. The colours machine could be a nightmare at times but for the first couple of years I would do alternate days on the whites machine while woody (Richard woodwood) ran it himself. Then after years of complaining about money he finally got another job leaving me to run the colours machine for around 90% of the remaining time I was there.

About 6 months before he left he had got someone called Marrant a job in the dyehouse. I don’t normally judge people on appearances but in his case I got it right instantly. He was like a hyperactive kid on top of being one of the most cocky, arrogant and obnoxious human beings I ever had the misfortune to meet. I was hardly the only one who absolutely hated being on his shift. He messed about with my machine a lot which as stated previously I seriously hated. I would have happily taken a 20 percent pay cut in exchange for not having to work with him.

By this time the management had (finally) became aware of some of the things that went on in the dyehouse. I was called up into the office and was told that they would be keeping an eye on what was going on. They even said they knew I had nothing to do with it but just to stay away from the water bomb throwing and the other stupidity.

One day the area manager called us all around and informed us that he had sacked Marrant after catching him throwing water bombs. He wanted to make an example of someone and it was a rare occasion in life when the actual guilty party was punished alone. It could just have easily been anyone else. That was the best news I heard in the entire time I worked in the dyehouse.

Typically for Charnwood Elastics one problem was replaced by another. My longtime supervisor Glen Leeson started having lots of days off, this on top of a poor disciplinary record meant the management had no choice but to get rid of him. I’d always got on well with Glen and he was one of the few people the place was worse off without. His replacement was Bruce Steel who I had known since castle rock high school.

What happened next was a scenario that most people would be familiar with in the workplace. On the factory floor Bruce was typically one of the lads who while working hard also liked a bit of a laugh and a joke as well. The minute he was given the supervisors job he turned into an absolute nightmare, he was just trying too hard to impress the management.

One example was the dye kitchen which had always been cleaned in the last half hour of every shift. He insisted on cleaning it 3 or 4 times a shift while at the same time expecting everyone to keep it spotless which was near impossible given the nature of the job. He was constantly picking trivial faults over things nobody else had previously cared about.

Like anyone else he never did anything about the real problems, a knot carelessly left in the elastic by the weavers that causes a wrap in the steamer for half an hour nothing gets said. On the other hand I do something wrong that holds the machine up for 30 seconds and he makes a massive issue out of it.

At around this time the management started setting every machine production targets, mine was 15000 meters per shift. This was of course a flat meaningless figure which in no way took into account obvious factors such as the number of individual orders or the fact that some orders with dark colours or heavy straps were physically impossible to run quickly. Then of course was the fact that the management had ignored the countless complaints I had made over the previous 4-5 years regarding the problems that were causing loss of production in the first place.

Bruce was obsessed with reaching the production targets. If the machine was in a production run during shift changeover we had to reset the counter and record what we had done on our shift. Once I reset the clock a couple of minutes early and he made a massive issue out of the fact a few meters production would be counted on the other shifts figures and not ours.

I on the other hand couldn’t care less, I just did the job that was put in front of me every day and did it the best I could. It was far easier for the management to sit in an office set targets and draw graphs than it was for them to come out into the dyehouse and sort out any problems. I also knew full well that like every other “new idea” it would last a few months then be forgotton about. Nobody ever got rewarded for exceeding the targets and nobody ever got punished for failing to reach them which makes the whole exercise pointless!!!!!

Looking back this was the point at which I should have got another job and got out of there. A mundane job like stacking shelves in a supermarket on 20-30 percent less money couldn’t possibly been any worse than what I had at the time. Not leaving Charnwood earlier was one of my few working life regrets.

The factories days were however numbered as the textiles industry in the UK was in decline, in March 1999 Coats Viyella in nearby Loughborough closed with a loss of 430 jobs. Cheap competition from abroad was the single reason. I knew right from the start that our factory had other factories in Sri Lanka and Mexico where Bruce was sent after a while never to return to the Charnwood factory.

After 5-6 years it was the end of workplace conflicts with other people but now it was becoming more obvious I would soon be out of a job.