The scandalous world of corporate hospitality and 'selective austerity'.How many times do we hear that fag breaks and clocking out 3 minutes too early cost companies god-knows-how-much?
How many times do you hear that "the money is tight", that you can forget about a pay rise and, actually, can you do an extra unpaid hour tonight cos there's work to finish? That companies are always under the threat of a volatile world and 'flexibility' is a must?
And how many times do you hear of stories like this one? It appears that, after axing 15,000 people, bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland is going to spend £300,000 on a corporate hospitality package for executives at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
To be fair, RBS are not alone. The ever-attentive media failed to pick up on the scandal of British Airways sponsoring the Taste of London week with free luxury food and drinks only days after asking their staff do work for free.
Last October, Barclays organised a £500000 corporate weekend on Lake Como at a hotel where rooms cost as much as £1,000 per-night. Less than three months later came the announcement that Barclays were axing 2,100 jobs.
The self-serving world of 'corporate hospitality' remains something you rarely read about and yet the examples are countless. Because if people knew about it, they'd clock their employers' selective approach to austerity and get cross.
Every single time the minimum wage is raised by a penny, the bosses' associations piss and moan about how many people will be forced out of work and how it will be a drag on the economy. At the same time, staggering amounts of money are routinely thrown at bosses' birthday parties, gala dinners or 'motivational weekends' at opulent exotic locations for top management where celebrities are hired for a 20-minute-speech to the tune of thousands of pounds.
Suddenly, that's not a drag on finances.
How many times do you hear that "the money is tight", that you can forget about a pay rise and, actually, can you do an extra unpaid hour tonight cos there's work to finish? That companies are always under the threat of a volatile world and 'flexibility' is a must?
And how many times do you hear of stories like this one? It appears that, after axing 15,000 people, bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland is going to spend £300,000 on a corporate hospitality package for executives at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
To be fair, RBS are not alone. The ever-attentive media failed to pick up on the scandal of British Airways sponsoring the Taste of London week with free luxury food and drinks only days after asking their staff do work for free.
Last October, Barclays organised a £500000 corporate weekend on Lake Como at a hotel where rooms cost as much as £1,000 per-night. Less than three months later came the announcement that Barclays were axing 2,100 jobs.
The self-serving world of 'corporate hospitality' remains something you rarely read about and yet the examples are countless. Because if people knew about it, they'd clock their employers' selective approach to austerity and get cross.
Every single time the minimum wage is raised by a penny, the bosses' associations piss and moan about how many people will be forced out of work and how it will be a drag on the economy. At the same time, staggering amounts of money are routinely thrown at bosses' birthday parties, gala dinners or 'motivational weekends' at opulent exotic locations for top management where celebrities are hired for a 20-minute-speech to the tune of thousands of pounds.
Suddenly, that's not a drag on finances.
11 comments:
Hey, take a look at this. Ridiculous!
Bosses at AIG spend £50,000 on shooting party!
There is only one answer Claude, Dump the bosses offf your back!
In other news:
* people with homes mere yards from the River Thames still manage to get thirsty;
* man outraged at having to pay bus fare when “it was going there anyway”;
* dairy farmers squander water by not bathing in milk;
* Left continues to fail to understand why every last penny of a companies assets can’t be given directly and immediately to its employees.
re: Constantly Furious (sort it out then, I add)
Look at this squalid example of little people doing the groundwork online for the masters, hoping they'll have an extra bone and a couple of crumbs thrown at them.
"Left continues to fail to understand why every last penny of a companies assets can’t be given directly and immediately to its employees."
Right continues to 'argue' with abundant use of strawman technique.
Oh...and Constantly Furious. Don;t forget to smile next time you're given an order. And stand upright.
I'm not having anymore swearing and petty name-calling on this blog.
Constantly Furious' latest message was deleted.
* Left continues to fail to understand why every last penny of a companies assets can’t be given directly and immediately to its employees
Yes, coz that's what this is about isn't it?
There's been a crisis, CF. People are opening their eyes. They saw what the age of opulence and indiscriminate behaviour by the big people. Stop that drivel. It won't get you very far.
"They saw what the age of opulence and indiscriminate behaviour by the big people."
Nope, that doesn't make any sense.
I'm guessing by your handle, socialist sam that you're another who chooses not to understand how a large business works, and genuinely believes that stopping spending on promoting and growing the business is a good thing in a recession, as it frees more money to be given to 'the workers'.
This subject has been debated at great length by many - including the landlord of this blog - over at 'Liberal Conspiracy'. I suggest you take your half-formed sentences over there.
Yes, over at Liberal Conspiracy, where the person above is arguing that any matter not directly related to them is none of the workers' business. If the company shells a million on a jolly good evening for the CEO and his mates while telling you "they're fighting for survival", that's not supposed to raise an eyebrow or two.
So if a company has just made 15,000 redundant -as in the RBS case- and a few weeks later think it's a good idea to treat dozens of guests at Wimbledon to the tune of £19,000 each...then that's none of our business. We have to keep quiet. Same, according to CF, with BA. "Workers have too many rights", he said.
It's therefore fair to deduce that CF is not a worker. One of those 'wealth creators', perhaps?
Spending on promoting, advertising and growing the business is one thing, and a perfectly legitimate one.
Wasting money while saying the company is 'fighting for survival' is another.
Constantly Fuming,
a question has been burning:
Can you tell me: how can booking ex-footballer Martin Keown for an after dinner speech earn my company extra money?
Exactly how? Bear in mind the guy (or any of his ex-colleagues) can cost 20 grand for every half hour he opens his gob. Some cost even more.
Does that "grow the business", like you said?
Oh and another thing. A motivational weekend with all the top managers at a superpricey spa on a place I won't mention near Lake District.
Full weekend top hotel. Not a four star, which would have done for most, mind you.
A five star luxury hotel with jacuzzi and what not.
'Makes the company grow, does it not?
I guess like all those companies who thought treating Bernie Madoff to yet another weekend golfing was all added value.
Furious said:
I'm guessing by your handle, socialist sam that you're another who chooses not to understand how a large business works,
And you, condescending Furious of Turnbridge Wells, are another who chooses not to understand how workers feel when they get the piss ripped out of.
YOu have not come up with a single decent argument, not one, to defend the display of arrogance and mismanagement of funds described in the article.
In the brain of CF, anyone who considers themself to be a socialist or a lefty, like our friend Socialist Sam, obviously has no idea how businesses work and therefore has no right to criticise those poor bosses with their gigantic bonuses. It's this kind of arrogance that I despise.
I say to CF, stop being patronising and instead of spending your energy looking down your nose at other people, try and back up your argument.
All you've done so far is swear and produce this kind of idiocy; "people with homes mere yards from the River Thames still manage to get thirsty"
We're still waiting.
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