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G4S: Catastrophic corporate failure..

I have to say I am enjoying the very public roasting G4S are getting. I've despised the cunts ever since being in their care for prisoner transport. They really are the biggest most mismanaged bunch of oafs you can imagine.

All paid for from those bits of your wages that get kicked upstairs to the treasury. Lovely day.
 
Edie said:
The time is now don't make a mistake
Because the enemy prowls, wanting to attack
But we're on the wall, we've got your back
So get out front and take the lead
And be the winner you were born to be
G4S! protecting the world
G4S! so dreams can unfurl
24/7 every night and day
A warrior stands ready so don't be afraid
G4S! secure in your world
G4S! let your dreams unfurl
We're guarding you with all our might
Keeping watch throughout the night"
Click to expand...

sleeping%20guard%20in%20op%20room.jpg
 
Let's hope this affects their business.They were never going to recruit enough bodies with the money their paying ,i think it was 8.50 an hour inside and 6 pound odd outside.Thank fuck the police haven't been privatised ,so they can pull them out of the shit
 
no relation mind, iirc. Group 4 was just what they called themselves before becoming some omnifuckup security firm who specialise in herding the needy
 
I watched a bit of the select committee today, the G4S boss did not come across well while I was watching. It seems they only know who will turn up on the day, when they do or do not turn up. Bit late to organise cover.
 
weltweit said:
I watched a bit of the select committee today, the G4S boss did not come across well while I was watching. It seems they only know who will turn up on the day, when they do or do not turn up. Bit late to organise cover.
Click to expand...

... but of course such agency-style labour provides more flexibility to the economy.

:facepalm:
 
I don't think this is the last we will hear of it, I expect other shortfalls during the games and soldiers or police having to take up the slack again at even shorter notice.
 
2002: Nick Buckles is appointed chief executive of Securicor, one of the largest UK security firms
2004: Securicor and Group 4 Falck merge to form Group 4 Securicor (G4S), with Lars Norby Johansen of Group 4 Falck as chief executive. Today the company is the world's third largest private employer (after Wal-Mart and Foxconn), with more than 657,000 staff worldwide.
2005: Buckles takes over from Johansen as CEO of G4S.
2007: G4S joins the FTSE 100 index
2008: Group turnover reaches almost £6bn – an increase of 22% from 2007
2010: Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga dies in October after being forcefully restrained by three G4S security guards on a British Airways flight. No one was charged for Mubenga's death
2011: In March, G4S is granted the contract to provide security for the London 2012 Olympics.
11 July 2012: The Guardian reveals that 3,500 British troops would have to be drafted in to ensure security at the Games. G4S reveals it could lose £50m as a result.
16 July 2012: Buckles' future is cast into doubt by the G4S chairman, John Connolly. G4S staff fail to show up for training at Olympic team hotels in Manchester and the West Midlands. The Guardian reveals that officers from nine different police forces are to be drafted in to make up for the shortfall.
17 July 2012: Buckles is grilled about his role in the affair by the home affairs select committee. He tells MPs he is "deeply sorry" for the oversight but insists he is still the best person to ensure security demands are met by G4S.
Click to expand...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/17/g4s-brief-history-olympic-security?INTCMP=SRCH
 
From facebook :oops: but seems plausible
Posted by a G4S security employee: "The reason people are not turning up is because G4S has sent out contracts stating that workers are liable for the cost of training unless they complete 5 days work. However, G4S are refusing to guarantee 5 days work, or tell us the cost of the training sessions. That is why thousands of us are holding onto the part-time jobs we already have. And yet apart from LBC radio and this post on yahoo, nothing in the press has been mentioned about this"
 
the mind boggles at the utter incompetence on display here.

The summer I worked at network recycling, I reckon a team of 2 of us recruited*, arranged the training, and managed the logistics for around 1000 volunteers, and a peak of 150 paid staff at up to 8 venues per weekend across the summer including the logistics of moving those staff from event to event from cornwall to kent to scotland and anywhere in between.... and that was on a total shoestring budget, and with about 1 months lead time to the first event.

now granted, the SIA training is more in depth, but the only actual requirement for G4S with that is to arrange the training and make sure the people attend, and it seems they can't even get that right.

If need be, we'd turn to agency staff to plug any gaps, but frankly, we're in the middle of the longest recession in living memory, so a company that can't recruit and train 10,000 staff on the sort of budgets we're talking here in 7 months and has to end up turning to the army to plug the gap, is completely and utterly incompetent, and all the senior managers involved should be given the boot before they cock this up any further. Not that I believe for a second that asking a single company to arrange the entire security for the entire event was even vaguely sensible mind.

This is easily solvable in the timescale with no army involvement, it just needs individual contracts for each venue to be given to different experienced SIA companies from around the country, as this is well within their competence to sort out and staff from existing trained and experienced teams even on this short timescale and G4S to be sacked from the project entirely.

I could pretty much guarantee that I could round up sufficient SIA personnel to cover these events myself in about 3 days if given a list of venues and staffing requirements per venue, along with the security manuals that must surely have already been produced.


*plus 2 x project managers, and site managers.
 
'How many thousands of jobless were G4S planning to deploy, either directly or through sub-contractors, before workfare schemes became PR-toxic? Here is a company getting paid an average of £28,000 for each of the 10,000 employees required. With unemployment standing at 2.6m, it is incredible to suggest that staff could not be found and trained for such a well paid seventeen-day engagement.' Much more likely is that the company miscalculated in its attempts to maximise its profit, over-estimated its ability to do things “on the cheap” and the availability of free labour, and spectacularly failed. Another rocket fired into the side of the HMS Private Sector Efficiency from atop a London council block.

The Olympic Security scandal reveals the issues behind workfare schemes with crystal clarity. There was plenty of money available. There are no permanent jobs beckoning at the end of the Olympiad. The demand side is fixed – 10,000 is the requirement; no extra jobs will be created by deploying training schemes.'


Apparently Close Protection UK are a subcontractor to G4S for fire safety stewards at the Olympics!

btw the author, Alex Andreou, seems a good new writer,

waits for Penny/Owen barbs...
 
'Assigned to the WP informed I will be working 30-42 Hrs per week in order to keep the £71 (sorting at a recycling plant) While still required to apply for 12 positions every 2 weeks,during this period 2 sick days are allowed,no holidays and as I live within 5 miles transportation costs will not be met.

From a comment after the article, this is incredible, I really didn't know the WP could be full time, and he has to pay his own transport costs, etc, what a ramp!
 
'Dear Polly
I honestly believe that, before telling us some more of what a lot of us already know, you would do well to offer a mea culpa for a piece of yours in Serco's in-house magazine, Ethos, in 2009 (http://www.ethosjournal.com/home/item/142-public-or-private) in which you appear to be supportive of outsourcing public services, and in which you state quite categorically:
"There is no doubt that putting some services out to tender has vastly improved certain standards over the years, broken the power of vested interests and brought in competition that has sharpened up results."


Oh, and Pollys been outed, sad really...
 
That's a very interesting theory in the New Statesman article. To put it in just a few words ...

G4S were planning on using lots of workfare slaves to enable them to put forward the lowest bid, but that got plan went awry when one of their sub-contractors made headlines with the 'workfare slaves made to sleep under bridge' story and made the mass use of slave labour impractical.

Sounds all too plausible at first sight.
 
Newsnight was absolutely damning last night. The chap from the police federation said that for the same cost as G4S had been paid for "organizing" this shambles 15,000 police could have been employed for a year - who could have guarded the Olympics as well. This of course wouldn't have shovelled money into the maw of the private sector though. :facepalm: :mad:
 
Back when private sector firms were quoting for this contract, apparently G4S were 25% cheaper than their nearest rival. Cheaper is not always better however, perhaps the next more expensive one would have delivered against the contract.
 
what's the frigging fuss? Just get the army to cover. Big deal. better them doing something useful rather then killing some afghan. total hooha over nothing.
 
This is not going to stop the great privatisation drive. It may slow it down a bit while they PR this latest fuck up out of the media eye but this govt, just like the last, is determined to privatise every public function it can. It does not matter one jot that the 'private'* sector fucks up time and again.

*It goes without saying that it is not the private sector at all. It's just as reliant as any civil servant on the public purse.
 
two sheds said:
... and just let G4S keep the money they've been given for doing nothing. Yeh no fuss at all.
Click to expand...

I would have hoped that the contract would have been structured with milestones, as in payments were only collected when specific targets had been met? Its a common contract structure in my experience.
 
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