Last week I went to a fundraising night organised by a badminton club. Badminton facilities were largely passed over by the economic boom and old-fashioned fundraising is part and parcel of the game, despite the flashy website and technologically improved equipment.
The event had been flagged as an evening of dancing to the music of the 1960s and, although I was very young (honestly) in the 1960s, I like the music.They also played music of the 1970s, which was more my era.
A gang of us sat around and reminisced about sneaking out to places like Sloopys on Saturday nights and generally got misty- eyed, but not too misty-eyed, about days gone by and how your parents had hoped that when you joined the workforce you'd get a job for life, while at the same time wondering if you'd get a job at all.
It's amazing to think that once people did think of jobs for life. Until recently, if you remained in the same company for more than five years you begin to wonder if your career isn't in need of some fairly drastic remedial attention.
The past few years have been ones of ever-increasing salaries as you job-hopped, amassing more largesse every time you dusted off the CV. But now those CV skills are coming back into vogue, as more and more cuts are announced and more people are having to face the fact that there isn't a ready-made position for them to move to. The most frightening cuts of all are being made in the companies that our parents really wanted us to join - like Aer Lingus and RT╔.
Thinking, perhaps, that their status would always be enough to keep them going, both organisations have, in the past, behaved in less than commercial ways that have left them heavy on staff, heavy on costs and facing an uncertain future. More shocking to many than the already well-documented problems that face Aer Lingus and RT╔ was the announcement by this newspaper last week that 250 jobs would have to go. The story was much the same as many others - rising costs and falling revenues. Something had to give. It may surprise readers of this column to know that I have never actually passed through the portals of The Irish Times.
Actually, I've never even met anybody at The Irish Times since my work is simply e-mailed on a weekly basis. Most of my contact is with the able and efficient staff of the accounts department and an occasional conversation with the equally able and efficient staff on the financial desk. But that's it. I don't have a desk, a phone or even an e-mail account. So I don't have any inside knowledge on the working of the paper that would make me any more expert on where things went wrong.
Except that it beggars belief, with this company as well as so many others over the past year, that those in (apparently extremely well-rewarded) senior positions hadn't already been preparing for a downturn in the economy and hadn't already been factoring in reduced revenues for the months ahead. I've been muttering about it for long enough and so have other people who contribute to this paper.
The Irish Times has increased costs because it has, in the time since I've been contributing, revamped the financial pages, produced additional supplements and included a glossy magazine with its Saturday edition. It also sunk a lot of resources into an excellent website from which it, apparently, earns nothing - thus behaving like every gone-bust dotcom in the world. Additionally, there's the small matter of the £60 million (€76 million) new printing works.
Revenue, up to now, has come by way of record circulation and record advertising. But back in April the paper was already warning of a more uncertain outlook. How on earth was it that everything suddenly imploded and - yet again - it's the staff that are the first cost to be cut? If you chop 250 jobs you're going to have to demand heavily increased productivity from the people who remain if you intend to keep up the same levels of quality.
It's really not acceptable for a raft of industries to blame September 11th on all of their ills. Airline companies were ravaged by inefficiencies well before those events occurred. Technology companies had already been sold off. But many of them are now seeming to imply that everything would've been fine if only the terrorist attacks hadn't taken place. It wouldn't. Organisations would have limped on for a bit longer, hoping the promised upturn next year would happen. With or without September, it wouldn't have happened.
There was too much fat in too many companies to take the strain. And yet so many chief executives - despite all the evidence - seem to believe that they are bigger or better or know more than the market.
As we danced to Abba and the Beatles at the fundraising night, I remembered the UK evening news bulletins in the 1970s when a daily toll of job gains and losses was given. Losses nearly always outnumbered the gains. Watching the news in the past few weeks has given me an even greater sense of time looping back on itself than listening to Waterloo or Yesterday. Nothing lasts forever. Not good times not bad times. Not even The Irish Times?
