Chapter One - All Honourable Men

My time with a company

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Chapter 1

The iron rule in a bookshop is that good books don't pull bad books up; bad books pull good books down. Even a few bad books can make a whole room full of good books look tatty.

Larry McMurtry - 'Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen'.

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In 1996, I was 48 years old, living in a rented flat west of Parramatta, on the dole, having lost two marriages and two homes, injured and laid up, and facing bankruptcy after a lifetime of hard, conscientious, no-holds-barred work, loyalty, integrity and service. Let me tell you how this came about.

Without going back too far, I had been in the employ of a security delivery company since 1983, up until 1995 �" with a couple of significant breaks that I will cover later. During that time I had held a number of contract positions, ending up doing relief work. This involved being on call and doing any number of different 'runs' on a given day, many of them at night; some of these 'runs' involved over 100 stops EACH, and I needed to know each and every one of them.

I'll just pause here and give you a couple of interesting sidelights. On one of these night 'runs', one of the places I was to go to was the Pizza Hut outlet at Jannali, delivering their pay details on the night when a young man, Michael Marslew, who worked there, was shot dead during a bungled hold-up. I was, naturally, turned away by police at the scene. This young man's father, Ken Marslew, has, since then, been a strong advocate for 'victim's rights'. Unfortunately, in his strong and fully justifiable stance on these issues, he is failing to see that, by promoting 'victim's rights' to the detriment of the rights of others, he is playing into the hands of a form and style of government, and of a corrupt, brutal and illegal judicial system; both determined to remove basic rights from all people, including, at the end of the day, those self-same victims. Beware, when upholding the rights of victims, that you do generate yet another set of victims. We'll get back to that later.

When I was in that position and place I still had a lot to learn.

Another incident that occurred while I was working was on a night in Blacktown, when I drove up and got out of my van to service a client's premises. As I did so, I saw two guys conscientiously standing against the wall of a building on the opposite side of the street �" just casually standing there, hands in pockets, and doing nothing, minding their own business. Trouble was it was about 1.40 am in the middle of Winter with

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a temperature of about 4 deg (just standing 'round doin' nuthin'), there was nobody else on the streets except me, and it was obvious they could only be there for nefarious purposes. I went inside the building I was to service, and quickly came back out the door, just in time to catch them in the act of smashing the window of a shop opposite. Obviously they expected me to be a bit longer about my work.

Notwithstanding, I left the scene, got on my radio, and called for police assistance. I was advised to wait, and within about 10-15 minutes, police vehicles started to assemble around the area of the break-in, which is their standard response, using mobile patrols, to incidents such as this. When the police were ready, they moved in and apprehended the two break-in casual street loafers in a car park, where they were just getting into their car while in possession of stolen goods.

The police put one of them in the back of a paddy wagon. There was a police dog present, and one of the casual loafers patted him and talked to him �" they're not savage dogs, just well-trained. While this was going on, the other casual loafer inside the paddy wagon set alight to it �" must have had a cigarette lighter with him. The police opened the door and he leapt out, knocking one of the officers as he did so; the officer retaliated with a punch to quieten him down. I was being interviewed by an officer at that time, and said to him that I had seen the whole thing, and if they needed any witness to support them, I was clear on what had happened. He said it was OK, and finished my statement; and the police then took the casual loafers away. End of story. One for the good guys.

On another occasion (and I will return to this story later) I, in company with another security officer who I was training, came across a semi-conscious man, bleeding badly from the head and fairly incoherent, in an alley behind a hotel. He turned out to be an off-duty police sergeant, whom I had previously met. We, the security officers, quite naturally helped him as much as we could immediately, and called the local police to further assist him. They, in turn, were a bit rough with him, unlike we security officers, despite his repeatedly saying 'I'm on the job'. I subsequently assisted the police command, to the best of my ability, in their investigation of how this off-duty sergeant came to be where he was in the state he was in, something that he himself couldn't remember, since he had suffered head injuries. Anyone who wishes to verify this can speak to retired NSW Police Superintendent Dick Graham, who lives in Bargo, was former commander of the Campbelltown district in Greater Sydney, and is a decent, honourable man. Would that there were more of him, and it's a pity they're in decline. Two for the good guys.

And again, on more than one occasion I stopped at the scene of road accidents, and rendered assistance to injured people. One of these times I arrived at an accident where a car had hit a telegraph pole at high speed, and had literally disintegrated. The car was in three major pieces, and a lot of minor pieces, and scattered along about fifty feet of road.

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The impact had driven the engine of the car up into the cabin and it was sitting in the gap between where the two front seats had been. Things didn't look good for the driver, who was lying on his back, clad only in a pair of shorts, in the middle of the road and in the middle of the wreckage. Spread along the footpath was a crowd of locals, bystanding in their night clothes, and none of whom had the temerity to approach the driver in the middle of the road. I got out of my vehicle, braced myself, saying “Here we go again!”, and without hesitating went straight over to the driver. You have to do these things in that way �" just get on with it or you never will. I knelt down next to him, looking for signs of life. He, in his turn, opened one eye, and said:- “Take me home”. He was a drunk as a skunk, and obviously had been slack and relaxed at the time of the impact. I told him to just wait quietly, and within a couple of minutes the ambulance showed up, and he repeated to the ambulance officers that he wanted to go home. They just said that he might be better off coming with them. I think he survived, but what a mess he'd made.

These stories are just to show you the type of work I did, the hazards of doing so, and the support I gave to police and the good citizens in our community, as well as clearly demonstrating that all I ever did was work hard, long hours, and that I gave as much support and loyalty to the community as possible, with a high level of integrity, honesty and common decency. Certainly I never did any harm or wrong to anyone, and certainly did much good, and fully and quite reasonably expected to be treated in kind. They say that the behaviour you expect from others is the sort of behaviour you yourself hold close, which is one reason why good people are always falling foul of villains �" we're always expecting good things from people who aren't worth the time.

As I said, I still had a lot to learn about the true nature of villains and where they come from in our society, a society, I will add, to which I had already shown an enormous deal of connection. But we'll get back to that later.

Most often, my working week would start on Sunday night (usually finishing the next Saturday morning), when I would go out and do one, and sometimes two, night runs. These night runs mostly went from around 7.30pm to around 5.00am or 5.30 am the next morning EACH; remember that I would sometimes do two of these in a night, usually finishing between 5.00 am and 6.00 am the morning after starting, regardless of how many stops I had to do. Now, I want you to work this out:- If I had done two night runs, each of which is paid from 7.30pm to 5.00am, i.e. 10.5 hours EACH, that means I have done the equivalent of 21 hours work. I usually charged the company for an extra three hours or so (say 14 hours for the two runs, or about 7 hours each rather than 10.5 each) when I did two runs �" very kind of me. Now remember this was on contract, so I was fully entitled to charge for the full work/hours etc. On top of that, since all the work was on contract, the operator whose run I was doing would not be paid for it and that time would come off the top of his weekly hours (his double time hours), and, therefore, by doing this work, I was

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actually saving the company money even though I was on a higher rate of pay!! Nothing sly and slippery about this old slave �" just a hard, gut-busting worker, full of loyalty and integrity.

I also worked on a contract, as a relief operator, that specified that when I did two runs in any day without the statutory 8 hour break, I would be entitled to an extra 8 hours pay at single rate �" I never once claimed this payment, despite often doing 4-5 runs per day, again saving the company money.

Also as an example of the outstanding performances I would put in; on public holiday evenings, such as Christmas etc, there was usually a requirement for the operators to work on that night, simply because some of the clients wanted and had paid for their documents to be delivered then. Some operators flatly refused to do this, which often left the company woefully short on those evenings. Enter the fearless and self-sacrificing relief operator. There were occasions, and I kid you not, when I covered five or six run areas on those nights, covering the company's arse while my family waited at home for me.

In return for this hard work and loyalty on public holidays, what did I ask? Usually about eight hours pay ($160), something like a quarter or less than it would have cost had the usual operators worked ($800?), and, oh, yes �" a little reciprocal loyalty and decency from the company would have gone a long way, too.

Now, let me explain the general payment structure for contractors. We worked on what is called a 'three-tier' system �" our basic rate of pay for hours of work were guaranteed under the Transport Industry Award; then we were paid for the 'standing cost' of owning and having available a commercial vehicle; then we were paid 'operating costs' for fuel etc used in the actual operation of our vehicle. What this came down to was a reasonably fair payment for owning and operating a commercial vehicle �" something that any number of transport and courier firms do not even approximate in their payment schedules, which is the reason for so many transport operator bankruptcies and a great deal of pain to everyone, including the economy and end users such as people who buy from supermarkets. When will they learn?

What this also meant was that this company could not and should not compete on the absolutely unlevel playing field of competition with 'courier' companies, many of whose payments to contractors are based on how many jobs are done at a fixed rate; something that could mean that if you only got two jobs per day, or you were browbeaten by transport management into accepting a less than viable rate for a transport job, you couldn't even pay for your fuel. The company I worked for had a very secure niche, and was, at one time, the best performing company under the Mayne Nickless umbrella. In two years, this profitable situation was completely turned around �" blame for that does not lie with the Union, as is often the accusation amongst the great information unwashed, or what I call the pub wisdom �" the contractors and Union always abided by the terms of the contract under which both contractors and company had

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prospered for some years �" the company management did everything else their own way and insisted on its absolute right to do so. For the cause of this company's demise you need to look elsewhere than the Union and the workers. But we'll come to that. As a relief operator, on call and with the extra burdens of run knowledge and performance, I received 10% per hour above the award rate for my hours worked, with all other payments being on the same scales as everyone else. On top of that, in order to ensure that I always had a vehicle available, I owned not the one required under the contract, but two commercial vehicles, when I was only paid for one. Good loyal, gut-busting servant this one �" nothing would stand in the way of his doing his honest day's (and night's �" and sometimes day's and night's) work!

I would usually be in bed by around 6.00am, and receive a phone call at about 10.00am, asking me to come back and do another run. In other words, I would be lucky to get four hours sleep, which was not only decidedly unhealthy, but also illegal. You have only to see the furore, in 2008, about rest times for transport drivers, the accidents that result from failure to uphold their basic rights to rest and food, and the claims that this will raise costs and prices, to know what I mean. I would rise, eat, shower, and go off to work again, usually starting from about 11.00am, and then going through until around 5.00am again the next morning �" generally 18 hours each day, often more, and occasionally I would work straight through without a break. During this one rather long day, something which was the norm, it was not unusual for me to do four or five different runs, all of which I had to know and do properly, no matter how tired, hungry, thirsty, or stressed I was. A couple of times while doing this, I made the mistake of arriving at the depot with some food on me so that I wouldn't have to stop work and could eat it as I went. The company response? Can't bring food into the depot; must be doing something wrong; must have too much time up his sleeve; must be getting something for nothing!!!! OK, so, along with everyone else, I stopped, and took the few minutes required (not even a proper meal break) to eat my food outside before I turned up. Duh!

It is safe to say that I knew more about the daily operation of the company than anyone else. I was usually on permanent double time by Tuesday morning. Now this may sound like a situation that would be costly to the company, but not so. You see, as mentioned above, when an operator took time off, the company deducted his lost hours from the top of his hours for the week �" in other words, if an operator took off one day when he normally worked the equivalent of one day per week at double time, he lost all of his double time, which meant that even if that contractor took off the first working day of the week, he lost his income from the top, or (generally) double time hours. Therefore, in most cases, I again was not costing the company money, and overall, taking all into acount, they were actually saving by having me do the work. Not to mention the fact that the work would simply not have been done at all if I didn't do it.

It is safe to say that, in working so hard and being such an efficient mortar between the bricks, I literally saved that company's arse (and money) thousands of times �" their work would simply not have been done

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otherwise, or would only have been done late at extremely high cost.

Really conned my way through that one, hey, Mike?

On top of this, I also took on a couple of stints as a Union delegate on behalf of the contractors �" an unenviable position requiring time and effort (especially when you're already working up to 20 hours a day and sometimes straight through without a break), which attracted no remuneration, and one which this particular company's (called Security Express �" they no longer exist) management made a policy of targeting on a personal basis as their chosen method of industrial relations. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, as only a bunch of clowns like this management, who've never gone out and done the work themselves, and never seen the reality of the company's operations beyond their own nice air-conditioned office and company car, can do! Used car salesmen to a T, and who in his right mind would buy from them?!? Talk about substituting petty vindictiveness for good management!

I will say, here and now, and before I rightfully condemn them for their deficiencies, that the under-managers all had two burdens to bear, which goes some way to explain their mistakes, even if it does not excuse their pettiness and vindictiveness. All of them were basically brought in straight off the street, and were thrown in at the deep end, with little training or indoctrination. They were also paid clerks' salaries, which does not help motivation or morale. They also had to labour under the burden of a malevolent dwarf, Captain One-Eye, who you will learn more about later in this chapter. What used to happen to these poor managers was that, being thrown in at the deep end, they would make mistakes �" in doing so, as was inevitable given their lack of training and indoctrination, they would promptly be given the boot out the door. Bad enough as this was for them, I would like you to pause for a moment and consider the effect this had on the troops at ground zero - the contractors, radio operators, etc - who actually did the work of the company. A company is a single organism ( I know �" I commanded a real one or at least its equivalent), subject to everything that happens inside it, and inevitably, the contractors' morale and work ethic suffered directly from the gruesome prospect of seeing manager after manager executed by One-Eye (The Malevolent Dwarf), usually after the same managers had not been given enough time or leeway to even settle into the job. I quipped that management at Security Express suffered a higher casualty rate than junior officers on the Western Front in World War I (statistically true), and that, by the way it was dealing with its own inner circle, the company was dealing itself a fatal blow from which it would never recover (as did the US Army in Vietnam, with its policies of six-month tours for officers and consequent low standards in officer recruitment and training - see My Lai).

Some of these self-same managers, arse-holed by One-Eye and Co, set up in opposition to the company after they left, and contributed to Security Express' slippery downfall. As a side-bar, one method One-Eye

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used to get rid of contractors who were too good and therefore made him feel threatened, or ones he just wanted to get rid of, was to 'promote' them to supervisory or managerial positions, and then, once they no longer had the protection of the Union 'umbrella', find a pretext to sack them. Cunning as the proverbial shithouse rat, this guy!

Here's an example of the pettiness these 'managers' and 'supervisors' used. In the lunch room, set aside by law for the operators' lunch etc, the guys would occasionally put up a cartoon or newspaper article for their own humour. Often these articles were a poke at management; this is a time-honoured and harmless practice in every place where I've ever worked �" sort of an Australian workers' right. Every morning, before I ever arrived at the depot, any and all of such things would be torn down from the notice board and flung away. It took me a while before I worked out what was going on �" the management, under direct orders from Captain One-Eye, and sometimes One-Eye himself, were doing this. In the eyes of One-Eye, there could be no humour on the job; no pokes at the management; and things like this were a personal insult to the management as well as a personal insult to him. One of the guys quipped that management 'had their sense of humour surgically removed' as part of their job description. Another guy, ex-Army officer, said: 'If I had the same man-management skills as these dicks, I'd be sleeping with a grenade every night of the week'.

These guys invented the term 'stress management' �" then improved it way out of sight and into a meaning that the term never held originally. They only knew how to function when in a crisis; something to which they rapidly became addicted and habituated as being the only way they could see things happening around them �" and they handled it at the coalface by lashing out arbitrarily at anyone near them, thereby creating more crisis to feed their addiction. These guys were never capable of just sitting back, seeing that things were running smoothly and just leaving it at that or even congratulating themselves on a smooth operation �" if nothing was going wrong, they just had to go out and pick an argument so that something was going wrong, and they could then feel justified in drawing breath. No wonder the majority of the operators wanted to stay away from 'the office' as much as possible. I used to quip that the only part of the management programme that was actually working was the Morale Reduction Campaign, part of management's PsyOps.

The MRC was immaculate! Too much time and effort was wasted running the men and not the company �" part of the Australian disease. We'll come back to that.

I will give you an example or two of both petty vindictiveness and management abuse of Union delegates. One day I had been working since before sunrise, without a break, on what turned out to be the hottest day in many years, and had shifted several tonnes of boxes and documents for the company. This day was so

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extreme that a post office closed down in metropolitan Sydney, at Epping, if I remember correctly.

Now for a juicy update: on Friday night, 27/02/2009, A Current Affair ran a programme on a young man who had suffered severe brain damage after working all day in the heat and without food or drink �" his bill, at that time $700,000, was expected to top $1m, which quite obviously is nowhere near enough.

At about 2pm, in the heat of the day, having had no lunch and after working for more than 8 hours straight, having started at 4.30 am, I advised the supervisor that, before starting work sorting through more tonnes of items, I was going to take my lunch break and have a shower, which I promptly did.

When I came back down, the same supervisor, one Barry Buchanan (known as The Weasel), approached me in company with a female supervisor (someone I had encouraged the company to take on as a matter of principle) and tried to start an argument over the issue. I flatly refused to engage in argument over the matter, since it was my legitimate break after 8 hours work, and started on my work again, leaving him to return to the office. He came back a few minutes later and told me that I was suspended for a week for 'abusing' him. He had been in consultation with his boss (Captain One-Eye, rather cruelly called that since he had only one eye, which was all he needed anyway, given the way he looked at the world �" our Union Yard Rep, Rick Cooley, brother of the NRL referee Phil Cooley (as a matter of interest, my uncle Ken Barwick had been a Rugby League referee for many years, and had refereed over 300 First Grade games, as well as 25+ Test matches), also had only one eye, the opposite one, and was fond of saying that they never saw eye to eye - who had told him to go ahead and 'get' the Union delegate (me) in this way.

This 'suspension' for a week took food out of my very young son's mouth for no reason other than that “The Weasel” and “One-Eye'' had this madness about 'getting' a Union delegate. Am I going to forgive or forget it?

Look into my eyes (both of 'em).

When the matter was brought up with the Union Organiser he flatly told the company management that operators would have their lunch breaks. They backed down like mongrel dogs. However, he did nothing to rectify the suspension I was forced to endure because of The Weasel and One-Eye, something for which this company still owes me.

Our Yard Rep, Rick Cooley, on the other hand, organised a campaign against The Weasel, ending with a refusal by the yard to work with him. Notwithstanding, the generally poor effort by the Union hierarchy allowed One-Eye to hold against me the totally unsubstantiated 'verbal' of having 'abused' The Weasel

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(One Eye has a very 'liberal' interpretation of the word 'abuse' and is known to be somewhat economical with the truth) �" something totally unsupported by the facts, and which lead to the resignation of the female supervisor (good for you, girl!), who, amongst other things, found this sort of thing unacceptable.

As for me, working on call and up to 18 and more hours a day, saving the company's arse on a daily basis at the cost of my own sleep, health and personal life �" who needed this s**t from a second-rate arsehole who had never even done the work, would have absolutely no idea if he were called upon to do so, had the intellect of a slug, the sense of humour of a dead rattlesnake, the courage and common sense of a flea, and the ethics of a crocodile?

This self-same Weasel, who had THE best comb-over which one time blew over in the wind �" no-one told him - once decreed that anyone who wanted to go to the toilet while working had to ask him first. Now, let me put this in perspective for you:- this guy was 'supervising' independent contractors, not employees; guys who ran their own business etc, and who carried the load for the company very well, in the main. You can guess what the response was to the schoolmaster Weasel's decree that they should ask to go to the toilet! The same ex-Army officer as before later said to me that the management had turned what used to be a conscientious, hard-working, dedicated group of workers into a sullen rabble.

Another example is when the company brought in an ex-copper as a manager. A classic this guy!! He had left 'the force' under a cloud, and suffered greatly because he had been 'complained about' in the force �" a truly broken man, who immediately got all the troops off side by treating them as if they were low-life criminals whenever they were obliged to talk to him. Talk about institutionalised! And I thought this guy simply had some personal problems, and wasn't truly representative of our police! I still had a lot to learn! Anyway, he figured he would show the Union who was boss �" he immediately started to restrict me, their most knowledgeable, loyal and hard-working operator, to sitting around all day doing nothing, and not getting any extra work and earnings. Guess what? Things fell down, runs weren't done or were done terribly,and the management were forced to wake up and put me back on the road.

Another majestic move this ex-copper made was to try to compel the relief operators, such as yours truly, to just accept payment for the time we actually took to do someone else's job. Hello? Because I worked so damned hard, saving the company's arse at the expense of my own health and well-being and family, I could do around 2 ½ runs in the time it took the normal bloke to do one �" I responded that I should be paid a bonus for every bit of time I knocked off someone else's run when I did it in his place. Say �" if I knocked of two hours �" I should be paid two hours extra as a bonus for outstanding work!

The subject of being paid for the time actually spent was dropped.

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Actually, by the time he left the company, this guy and I were on speaking terms. I wish him well for the future, and I'm sure he deserves it �" he's had a hard enough run as a copper, he's not a bad guy, and I suspect he was a fairly decent copper as well.

Now, just to give you a little deeper understanding of the general lack of competence, apart from total lack of man management skills of this company management, I will cite just a few more examples, which are truly things of majesty!

Now, right from the start, let me make it clear that this management was following a policy of expansion at any cost, and without regard for, or any real understanding of what the real cost was. To do this they were taking on contracts that actually cost money to run, doing so by competing directly with the 'courier' companies which paid Third World rates, and this inevitably lead to a situation of the company declining, rather than expanding. Remember, this company had been the flagship for Mayne Nickless two years in a row because of its profitability. I took a year off, looking after my son while his mother, who worked in the film industry, went to Fiji (we'll get back to that later), went back to work about 13 months later, and in that time, the whole company changed around 180 degrees. Instead of being the flagship of Mayne Nickless, the company was losing money at an escalating rate at the time I came back. Nothing was ever done to stop this rot; staff numbers were increased, especially among salesmen, and more contracts were added to try to make up the shortfall in profit, which only escalated the decline by adding more and more costs to the 'top line' meaning the 'bottom line' got smaller and smaller.

Aye, Good 'Ol Cap'n One Eye (touch forelocks, lads), in his 'future direction of the company' (one of the phrases he loved), lead it straight down the path of direct competition with 'courier' companies with their Third World rates of pay and massive rates of transport operator insolvency (many a man has lost his life there!).

Also, company 'run sheets', which supposedly detailed address and other details of client 'drops' on 'runs' were never up to date. When the company made a concerted effort to bring them up to date, the whole thing fell down, simply because they could not find someone who could organise it, meaning the run sheets were still not updated, and because the management was using a computer programme (RPG) that (ho,ho) started at midnight each day, and they were simply incapable of adjusting the sytem to cover runs

that ran up to midnight and beyond, as every night run (the most profitable ones) did!! Therefore, with no proper time adjustment, and night runs that all went through midnight, all the later 'drops' on any given run would appear first, followed by the early ones. Imagine how confusing this was to anyone relieving who did not know the 'runs' and the Sydney metropolitan area as I did!!

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I suggested that it would be simpler to just avoid this problem as well as the problem of the operators perceiving that any attempt to put specific times on 'drops' was an attack on their work practices (these 'management' guys were good at bullying individuals, but when confronted by a group, faded away), by simply starting all the run sheets at 00.00 and leading on from there, i.e start of run is zero. I also suggested that to overcome the problem of new 'drops' coming on to a run and not having a place to fit in, 'drops' should be numbered in 10s as in computer programming �" i.e line 1 = 10, line 2 = 20, etc; or even 1 = 5 etc. This would allow ample room for changes. Mystified looks! Never happen! And yes, I did do a computer programming course once.

Also, at one time while the management was attempting yet another 'reorganisation', they had, on the books, something like 62 office people to handle something like120 operators.

Hello??? This is like one office REMF for every two grunts in a combat unit which provided its own fuel and ammo etc in any case. I quipped that if the company was a ship at sea, it would be so top-heavy it would roll over at the slightest wave! Prophetic words! Notwithstanding this total (and costly) imbalance, the company still could not get basics right, up to and including the correct and timely ordering of stationery.

As an aside, this company had, on contract, well trained ex Army, ex Navy and ex Air Force personnel and officers �" none of them ever held any position of supervision, management or responsibility for long (though a couple of recently-retired Army officers of the rank of Major and Lt Colonel came and went rather quickly after finding the management structure abominable, one ex RAAF WO disappeared after stuffing up industrial relations, one ex Infantry Sergeant left and built his own opposition company, and one ex-Army Transport Corporal - mate of One-Eye's - started as a supervisor and, from last report, was in gaol for embezzling the company along with two other managers), for the simple basic reason that Captain One-Eye (who had some claims to being ex-RAAF) was one of that type who live in fear of anyone more able then himself, which was just about everybody �" he was and is utterly incompetent and his one forte was back-stabbing. Any manager or supervisor who came into the organisation, none of whom were given any training as related above, and who showed any sign of competence or popularity with the 'troops', promptly got the One-Eye knife in the back. On top of that, One-Eye's idea of industrial relations was to try to dictate to and stand over the Union delegates on a personal basis, rather than negotiating on a proper business basis �" my response to this sort of bullying was that we, as delegates, couldn't make any decision without consulting the membership. That must've pissed this clown off when he couldn't intimidate an individual delegate, which meant he had to resort to personal attack with lies and fit-ups (see The Weasel above)!

Morale Reduction Campaign - perfect!

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At another time, when the company wanted to re-negotiate the contract under which we worked, I walked into the office after a few hours sleep (as above) to spy One-Eye leaning

back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, a body language pose which is supposed to convey confidence and control. Someone had been training this guy, yadda, yadda, yadda!

It was so staged I nearly laughed out loud, nearly blew the froth off the top of my beer (try it some time when you see or hear something ridiculous while you're holding a beer up to your mouth), so to speak, since he is, in reality, such an innocuous, useless character, and could never carry this 'confidence/control' pose off in the real world! When we all sat down to discuss changes to the contract, he started off by saying that the company wanted to renegotiate the contract ITS way and no other, and HE was putting HIS proposals and wasn't intending to debate any of it. As usual (after nearly laughing), I said 'can't make a decision until we get back to the membership' - who promptly rejected his proposals by vote as is their right!!

According to the World According to One-Eye, that result from the Union membership was my fault and something he could salt away as a personal offence against me personally for the future!!

He'd get me for that! Not only incompetent but vindictive as well, was One-Eye. What a prick!

There were also many glaring incompetencies in payroll keeping (my first job was as a junior payroll clerk on a manual system, learned from the bottom up, meaning I understood these things), including some people being paid twice or more for the same work, being paid for work not done, hours (as per the system outlined above) that contractors did not work not being taken off their pay, and on and on. The system should have been simple enough �" the supervisors were supposed to keep track of what work anyone did or didn't do, were then supposed to fill out a document detailing changes, and the pay clerk then, theoretically, only had to enter it into the computerised system.

Not so - the supervisors constantly failed to fill out changes, and the pay clerk relied totally on the computer and its systems without any true understanding of how payroll actually works. Any and every mistake was the fault of the computer, they said. Ho hum.

An outstanding example of a rort brought about by management incompetence and negligence is the following: Two contractors were assigned to weekend work as part of their contract; i.e. their 'normal' week ran from Thursday to Monday, taking in both Saturday and Sunday at normal rates of pay. The aforementioned Weasel, in his infinite wisdom, told these two to also put in overtime claims for their weekend work, which they gleefully did!! Now this is great stuff! What this meant, in real terms, was that

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these two guys were being paid, at double time rates, for up to twelve hours a day each on the weekend; time for which they were already being paid as part of their normal week. This equated to around 24 hours a week each paid at $20+ an hour EXTRA at double time, or around $500 a week for each one (in the early 1990's), or $1000 a week sheer waste in paying, not even twice, but the equivalent of three times (once paid as normal working day; then paid double time for 'overtime' for the same days) for the same work!! On top of this, the company rostered an extra worker to help on the weekends, and these two took the opportunity to offload all the real work on to him, and sat back in the office drinking tea and playing at being supervisors, something they were never entitled to do!!

At this time, the company approached the Union, of which I was a delegate, with their cap in hand, crying that the company was losing around $5,000 a week or around $250,000 a year (hey �" I could find you 20% of that in one hit with the Weasel-initiated-and-approved rort above, but, being a good Union delegate, I say and see nothing �" nuTHING, and besides, the company management demanded the absolute right (and don't you forget it!!) to run their own show and not listen to any scumbag workers like us �" so we left them to their own mistakes �" hey, guys �" the word was 'run' the company, not 'ruin' it), and could we help with a restructure (under the Hawke/Keating Labor government's concepts of everybody working together). Being knowledgeable about the company's operations, I and several others helped them to organise efficient runs, which quietly and without fanfare removed the aforementioned weekend rort, as well as a number of other rorts, including one guy who was paid the same hours every day for his longest day's work, which he only did once a week, all other days being much shorter and with much less work �" boy, did he hate it �" a spiteful little prick he was, too, yet another Toxic Dwarf, who later tried to backstab me. This little prick, one Danny Middlemiss, was at one time, while on the job, assaulted and held up by a couple of very large Pacific Islander types. Guess who won't be coming to his aid next time! Everybody!

But, hey, I and the other 'helpers' had absolutely zero power to implement anything. I'm just an advisor here! The whole thing fell flat simply because the management was not capable of putting the changes in place, and everything went back to the same old ways, with the added bonus that the management now blamed us, the ones who had genuinely tried to help, for their incompetence!

Was that the game plan all along, or were they just the simple dicks we all knew them to be, who

simply couldn't run a company?

The company continued to lose money, and that amount of $5000 a week they were losing kept going up. At the end, I believe they were losing close to $20,000 a week or a cool million a year and rising. This figure was to rise yet again once One-Eye got rid of me, arguably his best and most productive worker. Once he did that, it cost around $5000 a week just to rather ineffectually get the work done that I had

covered for around $2000!! But we'll get back to that one. Ho hum.

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Not only that, but not once did any 'manager' make any attempt to change these things. I even took one aside once and suggested that he stand aside from the momentary operations at the 'coal face', and spend a couple of weeks organising, which really is manager's work, as opposed to doing the coalface work of supervisors. You know �" play the game instead of the man, run the company instead of trying to ramrod operators who didn't need to be ramrodded and who consistently performed outstandingly without being pushed??? His response was a mental shrug and a dazed look. Ho Hum.

Now �" an interesting story; one that was to come back to haunt me when I was down-and-out and crippled, and which impacts on my claim with DVA to come later. This self-same manager, who I advised to stand back and look etc, was right next to me, on a cool day in winter, when I was working at sorting bags and parcels from ground level (OH & S - Que????), and I pulled up with a stab in my lower back. Ouch. This self-same manager took me into the office, sat me down, and gave some advice �" what he did NOT do was enter the incident in the injury book, something of which I was not aware at the time. Being what I am, an Australian of my generation, who doesn't complain or make a fuss, doesn't see doctors until he is at death's door and won't even take pain killers after surgery unless i really have to, who expects that everybody will do the right thing without being forced to do so, and who doesn't, to this day, take anything for nothing, I soldiered on with this back problem for three weeks without complaint, expecting it to just get better of its own accord. Well, maybe a little complaint, at home and in private�" but, then, I'm used to coping with things like that.

Lo and behold, three weeks later, on my one day off in the week, Saturday morning, within a few minutes of my getting out of bed, I folded up in agony with �" you guessed it �" the self-same back pain, only worse. I s**t you not �" it was a screamer �" I nearly blacked out from pain and had to hang on to a tree in my backyard rather than fall down. I was taken to hospital, about an hour away, and was sent back home with pain killers and a certificate. After two weeks of hobbling around, I was able to go back to work, and, assuming that the initial incident had been properly recorded, made a claim for compensation, only to be knocked back and treated with scorn and derision by a different manager from the original one who had witnessed the back problem occur, on the basis that the actual breakdown had occurred at home and he figured I was ripping off the company! Now a little side

information here, pilgrims �" the parent company, Mayne Nickless, was a 'self-insurer'; meaning that they were theoretically a big enough organisation to fund their own workers' compensation. What this meant, for the injured troops on the ground, was that this company would take any opportunity to divest itself of responsibility for an injury, no matter how well supported the claim was. And so they did, pilgrims �" so they did. But we will get back to that one later, too. This back injury plagues me to this day, uncompensated. Try it some time, pilgrims, try it �" when the day comes that you have the same problem �" then call me �" I'm

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listening, but I can't hear every creak of your back over the noise of my own.

Really conned my way through that one, hey, Mike?

Yet another good story is that of the manager (same one who knocked back my claim for the back injury with scorn and derision) who firmly believed that the night key entry (NKE) operators (so called because they literally used keys to enter clients' premises at night �" hence the need for a security licence �" we also delivered to banks etc) were getting too much money for working 12+ hours a night, 6 nights a week, Sunday to Saturday, in all weathers and conditions, and covering 100 or more clients each per night at an excellent rate of return to the company. At one time, according to figures I did (I have done some University level accounting and economics, but do not claim to be an expert), this was one of the very few productive areas of the company's operations. Of course, Mayne Nickless didn't do figures that way �" they had their own way of doing things, which, of course, didn't make much mathematical or properly trained economics sense, but was easy for a dumb manager to use.

Well, well �"

On the next freezing, wet, blustery night I hoved myself into the office and said: 'OK, Bob (the 'manager' concerned) �" tonight's the night. You drive, find the clients, do all the key work, do all the bag exchange work, and I'll sit in the passenger seat and watch'. He paused, as was his wont, while the gears raced in his head (this happened every time he was confronted by a curly one �" he once said that a bloke of the same surname and some sort of distant relative had been the first man shot by Wyatt Earp �" now who would want to do that to one of that surname? The guy that Wyatt shot probably took too much time thinking about the gunfight), then his whole face fell as the enormity of what he might have to do, or at least try to do, hit him. He had no idea what to do! The subject of night key operators getting too much money he never raised again. Ho hum.

Another manager, at a different time, said that he was amazed that the night key entry drivers, or one of them, could afford to put a swimming pool in at his home. My response?

Wouldn't you expect to be able to afford a few luxuries if you were leaving your family at home alone and possibly endangering your future happiness and health, and possibly life, in the search for something better, working six nights a week,12+ hours a night from dusk to dawn, including public holidays, on the roads in all weathers and conditions, and sometimes in areas of high street crime activity where you had to watch your back, as well as running the gauntlet of a hostile and frustrated NSW Police Highway Patrol armed with greater powers of intrusion than any police force in the world and who couldn't catch criminals

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but who could exercise their power against you, while owning, running and maintaining your own business in every possible way, and steering clear of bad management, the tax man's vindictiveness, increasing government over-regulation, etc, as much as possible?

Jesus!! Hey �" so the guy who does the work makes more money than you, Mr Man Ager �" guess what - he earns it! What's your excuse �" air conditioned office and paid-for company car not cool enough for you? Pen too heavy? Sitting in the office and discussing plans too hard? Traffic too slow on the way home at 5.00 pm when the NKE operator is just getting out of bed to start his tortuous run yet again? Coffee, provided free in your office, not warm enough for long enough while you sharpen pencils? Too hard to get up to be at work at 9.00 am when the NKE operator is still trying to get some sleep, and is often interrupted by calls from the 'office' about things he's already written for you in his log? Jesus wept!!!

Another interesting aside concerning the management at Security Express and their attitudes is this one. After I had taken my 13 months off (above), the company rang, saying that they needed me back straight away. I was in Queensland at the time, and initially the company arranged for me to fly back in the company aircraft from the Gold Coast, a regular week night flight. This would have put me back in Sydney, fresh and ready to work, on the same evening. Hold it, said the management �" can't be done due to insurance! So, instead of an easy flight back, I was forced to spend 14 -15 hours in a truck travelling down from Grafton, and then go straight to work upon arrival. Should have charged them for the travelling time!

Anyway, to cut to the chase, one of these man agers, who was promoted up from being a truck driver, took great pleasure in sending his children out on the morning flights, just for a little joy ride. No considerations of insurance there! But can't do the same for the worker!

Well, the joy flights stopped because, tragically, there were a couple of aircraft crashes �" one hit a mountain near Tamworth, and the other, on takeoff, went straight up and crashed. This latter was piloted by the son of the bloke whose airline contracted to Security Express �" a great tragedy for him personally and to his company.

This same brand-new 'manager', just bumped up from truck driver, held a meeting with us Union scum one day. His first statement was a beauty :”We might make all the vehicles into company vehicles” - meaning that the contractors would 'lose' the privilege of owning and operating their own vehicles, including the use of it for themselves and family. Now, pilgrims, I want you to consider this for a moment; at that present time, using contractors for their work, the company was saving money in a number of ways. Contractors, in the main, started and finished and were paid for their work from they started and finished, which could be anywhere within the confines of the city, and converting them to company vehicles would instantly add a

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minimum of half an hour each way per day. The company would have to pay for this extra time, which would inevitably be at double time rates. Twenty bucks an hour for, say 100 vehicles, equals $2,000 a day extra. Good managerial mathematics, that!

Now add this in: if all the vehicles were company vehicles, the company would have to provide parking space for them all, which would required a minimum of around 100 parking spaces in metropolitan Sydney alone. You estimate the cost; I'm too much out of sync with that sort of figure to even begin to work it out now, but the mind boggles at the amount.

This whole idea of converting the contractors' vehicles into company vehicles was, obviously, nothing more than an attempt to put one over on the contractors; just another puny attempt at intimidation by fools with no knowledge or understanding of reality.

Now, just as an aside, and to give you some indication of the other potential hazards of this job, and let us not forget the Michael Marslew incident related earlier, let me relate the following (this story does not reflect adversely on management, just for a change). One of the night drivers did a run which ended up in Nowra, where he met another operator and exchanged bags etc.

One night they were held up at gunpoint. The story is that a drug smuggling ring, utilising the 'secure' satchels (plastic envelopes similar to Australia Post's), were sending drugs through the 'security ' company's network (and they say baggage handlers wouldn't or couldn't do that in the Corby case �" more later)! When their expected delivery did not arrive on time, the night before, the drug smugglers decided to hold up the truck and get their delivery for themselves!! (Well, DUH! Like it was going to be there the next night and could just be obtained by armed holdup �" hey, if it had been intercepted by the law, do you think you're going to get away with an armed holdup to fix things??).

I believe all they ended up with was a gaol sentence, but, even so, the effect on the two night operators can be guessed.

To cap all of this 'management of Security Express knocking the night operators' crap off, and much to the annoyance of the real operators who worked so hard six days a week etc �" one brand-new, fresh-to-the-job, recently-elected, 'day' Union delegate also reckoned that the night key entry blokes had it too good. Naturally, in his mind, the day operators carried the company �" actually most day runs ran at a loss, and were lucky to do a third of the drops a night run did. This whining from the new delegate went on for about a week, until this new delegate, by invitation (and what a set-up it was), actually relieved one of the night

guys on his run, promptly got lost, had no idea what he was doing and where he was going, couldn't even

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find the right keys, and suddenly learned his lesson. No more was heard of that one!

The list is virtually endless �" the company, in its infinite wisdom, at one time installed a conveyor belt for handling freight �" much better than hordes of people bending and picking it up at floor level. Now, this freight could be anything up to and including large boxes, so you can imagine the problems in picking them up from ground level repeatedly. Well, the conveyor worked for some considerable time, with a few hiccups, but at least it was better than bending and picking. Then the company, in its usual infinite wisdom, decided to get rid of the conveyor on 'economic grounds' (they were losing money) and go back to bend 'n pick.

As a concerned Union delegate, I fronted them, saying that this decision would inevitably lead to back problems for any number of people. Not so, said the management, intent on this 'change for the better', which, I suspect disguised a phony move to cut some costs off the back of the ailing company by putting the burden on the backs of the workers. Lo and behold, within a pretty short space of time after the conveyor belt went, there were no less than thirty back injury claims �" this out of a total workforce of around 120. One of those claims was my own, and this was to be a situation repeated several times, with my going down with pain etc, and doing my hardest to stay at work. The major difference between myself and other claimants was that I worked very hard to persuade the doctors to raise my weight lifting limit, so I could go back to work or just stay on the job.

Really conned my way through that one, hey, Mike?

The interesting thing about some of the managers is this:- at least two of them actually approached me and asked what they should do to safeguard their future. One had copped the One-Eye knife in the back, and I suggested to him that he could definitely do better elsewhere (should have thought about that myself); the other had been offered a choice of staying with the company or moving to a management position in another part of Mayne Nickless �" I suggested that he go to the latter and not stay with Security Express.

This manager did just that, and still, as far as I know, works for that organisation, which is itself no longer under the Mayne Nickless banner �" just under 'someone else's' (ho,ho - well, theoretically, anyway). Even some managers had some sense, at least enough to know who to talk to about the real world of Security Express, even if they didn't necessarily have skill in managing the business.

On another occasion, the management, in its infinite wisdom, decided that the operator who drove a truck

to Canberra and back overnight could tow a large 'dog trailer' in order to carry extra freight. The fact that

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this trailer was too heavy in construction apparently had nothing to to with it �" they decreed it was to be so, forelocks were touched, and so it was. Many hours after his regular depot arrival time, which needed to be before 6.00 am to ensure timely delivery of documents to clients for business hours, the Canberra operator (Grunter) pulled in, angry, hot and very late. He had been unable to exceed 80 kmh all night, towing that 'dog trailer'! The clients waiting on the documents he carried were, obviously, put out by the whole thing, and it cost the company extra to arrange for special deliveries. That ended the dog trailer. Ho hum.

The management (the term 'manager' can be split into two words �" 'Man' and 'Ager' �" these pricks certainly made the men feel old!!), quite naturally felt that the whole business would run so much smoother without both the whining workers and the cranky clients, both of whom caused far too much trouble, cost far too much, and continually interfered with their (the Man Agers') smooth operation of their company. They got their wish.

Now there are no cranky clients, no whining workers, no company and no mentally-deficient managers. Ho Hum.

Of course this poor company no longer exists �" the poor b*****d committed suicide by manager, or, more accurately, it was shot in the head and the feet, all at the same time and over and over again, by its own management, who, in doing so, shot themselves out of a job; a clear case of negligent (and possibly premeditated) murder/suicide, at the very least carried out with depraved indifference.

There was a joke going 'round, just one among many -

“Why can't the management walk on water?' -

'Cause they're always shooting themselves in the feet!”.

I used to say that the managers spent too much of their time trying to shoot someone in the back of the head, like a Chinese execution (executee kneeling down and gun pointing down), instead of running the company, but since they couldn't hit a barn door at one pace, hit their own feet instead. Another view was that they always used a gun that fired backwards �" the Security Express Management Gun �" fire it and it blew back in your face! Whatever the reason, the management's water-walking days never even started �" too many holes in the feet for that!!

Captain One-Eye, who consciously or otherwise (well, duh, dumb both ways), was in the process of overseeing the demise of the company, once asked a mate of mine if he knew the identity of the person who was 'trying to destroy his (One-Eye's) company'. Not half paranoid, this One-Eye! Only a true fruit

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loop would set about killing his own organisation, then cast about for someone else to blame �" hey, anyone will do, as long as it's not me, says One-Eye!

Once, walking away from a meeting with management in company with another Union delegate, a former NSW kick-boxing champion, I said ' One-Eye is crazy”.

He said, “Yeah”.

I said, “ No �" I mean genuinely insane!!”

I meant it �" no-one could behave the way One-Eye did and be sane! Anyway, the mate that One-Eye asked about the identity of the person 'destroying his company' shrugged his shoulders and walked away shaking his head, since he didn't know what the hell One-Eye was talking about. I later suggested that he should have given One-Eye a sealed envelope, only to be opened after my mate left, and containing two names �" those of One-Eye himself and that big-time operator and stand-over merchant, Declan Byrne, who Mayne Nickless employed as an industrial relations troubleshooter after he treacherously turned his back on the Union after years of working for it.

Now, this Byrne was a classic �" first he sold his soul by betraying the Union, and then tied himself to the mast of a ship called Security Express, which was already sinking. Well, not sinking exactly �" just badly holed, down by the bow, blazing from stem to stern, with no way and no power, steering gone, stuck in a whirlpool at the height of a tropical storm in 30 foot waves, and with about a 25 degree list and climbing.

No �" not drowning �" just waving good-bye!!

One-Eye and Byrne were both destroying 'their' company (well - not really theirs; someone else paid the bills), and hopefully they both went with it when it fell �" I know One-Eye did,

just about two years too late to save the company from himself, Byrne, The Weasel, and

their insane machinations! Byrne once asked me, in an aggressive tone meant to intimidate, if I thought I could manage the company better.

The answer is an unqualified 'Yes'. At least I and a few others with knowledge and experience could have ordered paper clips, and quite probably could have saved the company. I reckon we could have managed it one hell of a lot better, as well! There was at least one other really conscientious guy who worked for the company, and who definitely had the best interests of the organisation at heart. His name was Kevin Hill, one of two of the same name, and he had been a courier previous to coming to SE. He was totally

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dedicated to his work, spending, as I did, the vast majority of his time working at about 200%, and once said to me that he would like to see the company become the absolute best in its field, with the best operators, and the best performance.

One-eye, for one of his unfathomable reason, probably because he got the idea into his head that this Kevin Hill was 'trying to take over running the company' (in One-Eye's paranoid dreams!), engineered a dispute with Kevin and got rid of him. Needless to say, the relief work that Kevin Hill was doing suffered as a result. Nothing to deter One-Eye, especially the certain prospect that his 'management' would do damage to the company. Kevin Hill promptly set up his own courier company, working from home, and proceeded to make a motza �" why would he bother with a turkey like One-Eye and his perverse management style? There was a man who could have run the company.

The insane antics of this 'management' caused a lot of terrible harm to a lot of undeserving people; people whose only interest was in making an honest living and paying their mortgage and supporting their family and providing for their future. An ex-manager from elsewhere, who worked at Security Express as a contractor (at the time alongside Kevin Hill on relief), once said that a manager can wipe off $100,000 at the stroke of a pen, but it takes a lot of diligent work from workers to achieve the same. These guys, the SE management, certainly managed the big strokes.

Now a little update: Pilgrims, it is now 2009, and the world has just entered yet another 'economic slump', and looks like going downhill from there, with projections of massive unemployment, lowering of standards of living, terrible times for all etc. This 'slump' was brought about by bankers and CEOs and their ilk and their dismal management performance �" I am prepared to bet that there are still some die-hards out there who will find some way to say the Unions are somehow responsible! Some people will never learn.

I used to quote to SE management the case of Boeing in the United States, which company used its wisdom to completely involve its workers in construction of its aircraft from start to finish �" the result was something like a 95% reduction in repair work needed on warranty for their product. One 'manager' shrugged, raised his eyes to the heavens, and muttered “The world according to Bob” (that is �" some Economics at University level, much practical on the ground man-management experience, conscientious study into management procedures and what really worked, loyalty upwards and downwards, integrity and hard work, prepared to put in every hard yard to make things work better for everybody, etc, etc �" definitely not SE management material).

I will round out what should be a hilarious litany of negligence and incompetence - well, it would be if it had not been so serious for so many people for so long �" by offering a quote with reference to this

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management:-

'Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few'

(to abuse Winston Churchill's speech �" my apologies, Winston), and with the following sad story.

The lady who was actually in charge of ordering paper clips (which One-Eye could never do with any approximation of efficiency), as well as performing a number of other small but essential jobs around the office, was the wife of one of the contractors, an ex-Navy bloke who was something of a hero, having been badly burned rescuing fellow sailors from a fire. He died of that dreadful cancer brought about by the use of asbestos as an insulator in ships' engine compartments; the cancer may even have been brought about by his rescuing those same sailors in that burning engine room.

The management, during one of its episodic headless chook reorganisations, decided that they could not afford to keep his widow on.

I fronted them on the basis that she was a 'legatee' (even though she was 'staff' and not union)'; I meant this not only in the sense of her being a Service legatee, but also in the sense that she was a company legatee because her husband had, in one sense, died in harness for the company �" he got very sick very quickly, and worked until he no longer could. They still sacked her - and the other front office staff, in revolt, just let the little jobs she had covered go without being done. The results, once again, should have been hilarious, with lots of small details breaking down in the office to the merriment of the contractors and some of the staff.

It should have been hilarious, except for the tragedy underpinning the whole thing; the tragedy of an RAN hero's wife being shafted, and the disgust that shafting generated, which disgust was, in some way, the cause of the merriment. We always seem to laugh at tragedy, since, often, we have no other choice.

We weren't laughing at her �" we were laughing at the terrible position the company management put itself in by sacking her and the chaos it caused �" a position that also adversely affected each and every one of us as well. A true comedy of errors with no winners.

It was kind of like watching a know-all hit himself while trying to crack a whip to show how good he is at whip-cracking.

As a final aside on this sad tale of hopeless mismanagement; approaching the final death dive of this poor benighted company marked for death by those managers set in place to watch over it, many of the

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workers, both within and without the office, realised that its days were numbered.

Some of them responded, despite the so-called security-based and trusted nature of their work, by stealing from the company and cashing in while they could. It was truly the death of a thousand cu*ts (I hesitate to add the 'n' needed here) for this sad company. A notable exception was �" guess who �" yours truly, who continued to work his own arse off, up to 20 hours a day, covering the company's broken arse continually in an attempt to keep the foundering ship afloat, and who kept doing the work of three or more men to do so while continually taking flak from an incompetent and vindictive management, as well as fighting to keep his own personal life on an even keel.

The same aforementioned mate that One-Eye asked about the identity of the person destroying 'his' company, a fellow Viet Vet, said to me once that I was the only idiot in the place who couldn't see the

writing on the wall, and that I 'didn't know how to take care of myself'. He should know �" he himself later back-stabbed me. Being the naïve dick that I am, or was, and maybe still am in some ways, I didn't know what he was talking about (read on �" this is a recurring theme for me).

Really conned my way through that one, hey, Mike?

Security Express' parent company, Mayne Nickless, is no longer with us as well �" they have been de-registered on the stock exchange, which is a sneaky way of disappearing and leaving all their obligations (including payment for my fractured spine �" oh, forgot to tell you, the company used to run freight aircraft, but had no ladders or things to get up inside them, sometimes a jump of eight feet or so - got a compression fracture of a thoracic vertebra by having to jump down from one, again uncompensated �" well, I never!), and re-surfacing under a different name, which they have done.

Alan Bond and Christopher Skase know all about that one!! If you or I did it, we'd never get our hands on a loaned cent again, let alone be given the opportunity to manage millions of dollars for other people!

One-eye got himself another job as a manager �" so did the guy who reckoned that NKE operators were getting too much �" it seems the criteria are to have failed elsewhere before you have any chance of appointment to yet another management position where you can destroy lives and livelihoods and ruin a viable company.

It's now 2009, people �" 2009!! Look around you at the current world crisis and who created it out of nothing.

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As for Declan Byrne �" well, we all know how organisations deal with proven traitors once they've outlived their usefulness. Either way, Union or Mayne Nickless, career speaking, Byrne is sleeping with the fishes. And, frankly, no-one gives a damn �" he had nothing to contribute in the first place and the whole thing would have been better off without him. A dumb, ignorant peasant who had nothing to contribute but bully and bluster, and who remains nothing better than extra ballast on a sinking ship.

The Weasel? No-one knows and no-one cares.

Well, to finish off this litany of incompetence, negligence, sad stupidity and inhumanity; good old One-

Eye, the immaculate manager who mishandled paper-clip ordering, back-stabbed fellow 'managers', engineered excuses to get rid of his best workers, expanded the company until it died for lack of oxygen in the rarified atmosphere of competing with 'courier' companies and their Third World rates of pay, ran an industrial relations programme akin to Genghis Khan, and who sacked a Royal Australian Navy hero's legatee, finally got his chance at me, one of his best and most loyal workers, and who was one of the few who were trying, at the cost of their own health and well-being, to prop up the company One-Eye himself was killing and that many other trusted workers were stealing from.

One-Eye was determined to show the Union, of which I was a delegate, who was boss �" he eventually found out that, at the end, no-one is boss when the ship is sinking. In retrospect, it was obvious that One-Eye could smell his own impending doom along with that of 'his' company, and as I've always said, you have to watch out for the last reflexive kicks of the dying Man Ager, just like you have to watch out for the last strike of a dying snake. If he's going down, he'll take someone with him, and One-Eye was definitely going down.

Oh, did I tell you? One-Eye had already been demoted from 'National Man Ager' to 'State Man Ager' �" the writing was on the wall for One-Eye. Mayne Nickless obviously had their own 'future direction of the company', and it didn't include One-Eye. His response was to run around, show them how big a b*****d he was and could be (and thus suitable management material to keep on), and how he could smash up his workers and their work. He was going, and he was going to make someone pay for it, even if it killed his own career! Even a brain-dead snake still has some venom. My apologies to the snakes.

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