A strategy meeting of the unemployed

Members of the legal fraternity

Today’s strategy meeting of the unemployed over 65s is taking place at Mike’s place, his few acres of exotic fruit farm in the foothills. The six of us who are coming are all taking Personal Loans to pay for the gas and accommodation in the area. We will need some days to formulate a strategy that will be effective in dealing with our unemployment situation.

Mike

Mike is a former government employee who took early retirement, moved out of the city, bought a small plot and began growing exotic fruits trees. He has been very successful and his smallholding is burgeoning. Spring is the time of rapid growth and it’s literally a jungle at the moment. I took some pictures to show you.

The visitors

The attendees are a lawyer from the Ministry of Tourism which went straight down the tubes at the start of the recession. He was laid off instantly. Another lawyer is advisor to a large economic corporation. Needless to say he’s out of a job as well. The third lawyer represented a huge construction outfit for years, made a pile of stocks in the company and retired. He held onto the shares. You can guess what’s happened to him. The construction company is no more, the pile of stocks is about as useful as wallpaper and our lawyer has gone directly from retired to unemployed without even passing “Go”.

The non-lawyers

The non-lawyer members of the club are an unemployed clerk from the Social Services and Welfare Department and myself, an unemployed engineer in the private sector. The clerk is furious: “I devoted my entire working life to helping the less fortunate, the unemployed, the needy and the homeless. I make it all the way to the top of the ladder – head clerk – comes a recession and I’m on my backside in the dust in the first round.

Then there’s me. In the 1990’s I was a manager in this engineering company of about 60 employees. Then came the turn-down in 2002. The owner closed the company but kept calling on me to help with certain projects. He paid me for my time and when things picked up a couple of years later, called me back on a part-time basis and I was very happy with the new situation. Now the work has stopped again and I can feel that I am teetering on the edge of unemployment.

The project timetable

What’s holding back the final decision is an inquiry by the Army Corps of Engineers who need some work done and approached us. “Of course we can do it!” we cried in excitement, and you can bet that I am the most excited of all. “When do we start?” we yell, but the answer is slow in coming. “Maybe in May, or perhaps June, possibly July, August is the summer holiday period, September is too hot, we’re thinking about October and November as a possibility. December is cold and holiday time. It will probably be January.”

“What year is that?” I ask from the depths of my disappointment. Don’t these people understand that they are the only customer in town with a construction budget?

We need a strategy

We need a strong, creative and winning strategy that will cover us all. Is it prayer, optimism or will continuous banging on the door bring back the work?