Managerial “Improvement”

Regina Cano

One could tell from his explanation that what had happened had been a camancola (a shady deal).

Certain people at his job were implementing the Managerial Improvement Program (a kind of Cuban Taylorism).  Aided by the advantage of managing others from above, they were using this to get rid of those who either weren’t a part of their camarilla (clique) or who they simply didn’t like.

It didn’t matter that they were completely disregarding the rights of workers who did their jobs in a reliable and disciplined manner.

The person in question, a warehouse clerk, had been working for his company at an off-site facility for 10 months.   Nineteen days after being reinstated (which included 12 earned days of vacation), the provincial office did an inspection of the warehouse stock and discovered certain surpluses and shortfalls in relation to the books.

During the clerk’s absence, the warehouse’s manager had been in charge of carrying out all the tasks, but the accounting and operations responsibilities had always belonged to this boss.

Before the committee of experts who are supposed to evaluate each worker, the warehouse manager alleged (who I believe did not have clear legal standing for this) that the worker was slow in carrying out his work, something that was never before mentioned during his three previous years on the job.  Nevertheless, in closed circles he was accused of being the person responsible for what was discovered in the inspection.

In short folks, at that moment began a reign of terror, with his being attacked by supposedly trustworthy people (who were able to be transferred into other job positions, perhaps to gain what they had negotiated) and sold out by others who were later placed in positions of importance.

They employed everything from fear to confusion, leaving this young man in such a state of defenseless that it didn’t register with him that justice was based on laws and facts sustained by proof.

With the use of a simple mathematical formula, anyone could calculate that what he was accused of was impossible (he hadn’t been working there for nearly a year) and that he was not the culprit behind what was found.  But apparently his guilt was assumed to be the case by all those involved, even those outside the company – people higher up.

Cornered, the young man accepted the suggested solution as positive whereby he would just quit his lower-level position that was not slated for elimination.  Still, this raises even more doubts, because being guilty in their eyes, why would they not fire him instead of suggesting he quit?  One could speculate that they probably wanted to use his position for another “interested party.”

In the end, it’s turned out that now he’s an additional member of the unemployed in search of a job, while some scumbag leans back gloating.   ?