LABOUR TARNISHED

  *NOTE: NO PHOTOS IN THIS BLOG; ALL PICTURES ARE ADVERTISEMENTS.

Genre - Fiction

Length of blog - 4500 words

Summary - Janford gives a peek on how IT (Information Technology) can be part of Global Labour Union rules and that such incentives should not be forgotten or let go easily. 

Labour Tarnished

Part One: First Impressions

                “Our Chennai office is shifting”, Prabhu continued, “Not far away, a couple of blocks away.”

                “Oh, that means we would need to move all of the equipment from the Server rooms”, Janford said.

                Janford instructed his subordinate in Chennai to prepare an overall plan – to be reviewed every day and disconnected the call. Prabhu D. had given him first hand information about the office’s movement that would be fresh news to his own boss too. The one thing running through Janford’s mind was that he wanted to be in Chennai at the time of the shifting activity.

                Janford’s pace quickened as he neared his boss’s cabin. He had promised himself that he would visit Vailankanni, a holy place close to Chennai, since a year now. Heck, he had promised it to himself every time someone mentioned they were going for a visit to the shrine in southern India. His relatives in this island of a country would visit this Holy coastal town 300 kms south of Chennai city, in throngs.

                Janford, himself had been part of such a ‘throng’. He did not remember much about Chennai city, then known as Madras - that they had had to stay overnight at a hotel there. It was close to ten years now. He was in his graduation years, his college days, yet the memory of serenity of Vailankanni was ever present. He remembered the calmness he had felt, it had overtaken him. He had always longed for that kind of peace again.

                He wasn’t sure whether he had prayed for this job that he now had. But had always felt indebted to his visit to Vailankanni.  Or was it because of Prita? He was sure he had been focused on Prita, his wife now.  She was in his pilgrim group and of his age group too. She had been the highlight of his trip. Especially being surrounded by a pious lot. Janford found himself smiling in front of his boss, who did not notice it, as he was busy on a call.

                Janford recollected how he had considered the fair-skinned maiden too posh for him. His smile returned as he thought about his ten-year younger naïve self. How the trip had shaped him. How he had been intimidated with Prita’s fair skin tone. How her manner and attitude was of a local, yet she was fairer than most people in his country, in fact, he had notice that she was lighter-skinned than most people at Chennai and Vailankanni too.

                “You two are born in the same year”, someone had broken the ice for him.

That introduction had been enough. He tried to be as close to her as he could. Even after the trip, he kept in contact with the ever elusive Prita. And after five years of courting her, they had decided to get married. Janford was pulled out of his reminiscence.

 “Yes”, his boss said.

 

Part Two: Plans Laid Bear

                “I would like to be present in Chennai during the shifting”, Janford said.

He was determined not to let this opportunity pass by.

“Oh!”, his boss continued, “The project is being taken care of by a vendor company. There is no need for your personal presence.”

“But the equipment is pretty expensive and sensitive. Plus my team would be motivated to meet me”, Janford said.

“Your name did not come up in the initial discussions”, Janford’s boss continued, “But let us see how this pans out.”

“I need all floor diagrams including equipment inventory files ASAP”, Janford’s emailed the Chennai team as soon as he stepped out of his boss’s office.

He sent a meeting invite to the Chennai team during which he would lay his plans bear. It had always been his style. He left work that day on an optimistic note. He wanted to get a ticket to Chennai.

Next day at the said meeting time, Janford had all the Chennai team members log into to a conference call. He was surprised to hear the voice of Siva who had been in the night shift.

“Hey Siva, please rest if you are tired from doing the night shift”, Janford said.

“It’s okay Sir, I usually wake up at this time anyways”, Siva said.

“And you sure you will be able to be attentive in today’s night shift?” Janford said.

“Oh, Junesh is in tonight’s shift”, Prabhu continued, “Siva has his two week offs starting today.”

 “Please share the shift roster from now until once week post the shifting activity”. Janford said.

                       W | T | F | S | S | M

                 Jun | M | N | O| O | G | A

                Siv | N | O | O | G | N | N

                Pra | A | G | G | O | O | M

Janford peered at the familiar format of the shift roster. The first line were the days of the week followed by each personnel’s shift that day. This weekend saw Siva in General shift because the Morning and Afternoon shifts were forfeited into one shift.

“Ok, so I see that during weekends Chennai office has bare support staff.” Janford continued, “So you all take turns at weekends off. But what about if one of you wants offs on weekdays.

There was silence.

Janford said, “I’m asking how do you guys cover the gaps in the roster? Or you guys don’t fall sick in India, or are not allowed to fall sick including your near and dear ones?”

Janford was a staunch member of the labour union. In fact he had drawn the line for the IT sector in his own country. The line being the network engineers. Network engineers in the entire IT sector were allowed to form unions. He had proved this in a court of law. He himself in his earlier years had gone through a phase of work life just like these young lads in Chennai, being squeezed out of every bit of his energy. He had then committed as much time and effort as he could to put in to get these commendable labour laws to stick in a small country line his. He did not want to belittle the Indian men, but was beginning to see his huge neighbouring country’s laws were in the grey. He knew the bare calculation that at least a handful of men were required to cover the seven-day-week, yet here only three network engineers were trying to support the entire Chennai’s office.

“And then when there’s a network related outage, we are asked for reasons of failure”, Junesh said.

Janford understood that he had made his point. He changed the topic.

“I have created a new folder for documentation. I will review the files in these folders; have them updated and corrected. And as they are corrected want revision numbers on all files. Older files should not be deleted. Whatever effort is taken should be transparent to all”, Janford said,” Now, let’s get to the technical part.”

“I want each of you to add all documentation related right from the seat you are currently sitting to the office seat of your new building”, Janford said.

The floor-wise network diagrams were almost up to the mark. He had told them to rectify a few minor errors and told them to prepare a proposed floor diagram, which would be used to bring the new office premises into a live production environment.

“And”, Janford continued as he stressed, “Do let all the project related people in Chennai know that I would be happy to be present in Chennai “

Content with what he had said he concluded the conference call with his Chennai team.  He wanted his name to be synonymous with the shifting project. If anyone was to mention his team’s name, his name should also be taken along with the team’s name. Next, he would also press Filipa into getting the budgetary requirements needed.

 “Filipa, as you know your company has been awarded the Chennai shifting project and the Chennai network team has a dotted line reporting to me”, Janford continued over the phone, “I would like to be in Chennai  during the schedule.”

Filipa acknowledged. She was just a small fry. She did what was instructed to her by their boss in Mumbai.

“I want it to be common knowledge that I am keen to be present in Chennai”, Janford said.

 

Part Three: Technical Perfection

It would almost two days before the weekend activity started that Filipa would call Janford.

“I’m sorry, we could not get your ticket booked, because we got a last minute approval for you to go to Chennai”, she continued, “You have to bear the expenses by yourself, collect bills and then reimburse them.”

Janford wanted to jump for joy.

On the day, of the flight Janford was called to work by his boss, stating that he could do half a days of work and then leave for Chennai, whereas, his boss and rest of the Chennai bound team had left early. And the mistake made by Janford was to agree to his boss. Work held him up until he missed his flight. At the airport, he called a friend of his who worked for the airport.

“I missed my flight, can you help me”, Janford said into the phone.

The friend took him to an in-airport lounge and made him have a round of drinks and while Janford was on his second glass, he gave him a confirmed ticket on the next flight to Chennai in an hour or so. Of course it had cost him. Janford had decided that at the point of payment for his second ticket that he would claim all the amount from the company.

“I don’t know how, but it’s my boss who called me for half a day’s work and delayed me”, Janford continued, “And I think it is he who should approve this fare too.”

His friend waved him off, with the constant grin on his face he had got working in the hospitality industry.

Filipa called him enroute to the Chennai office building.

“Where are you? Did you hit traffic?” she said.

“I will be there in some time, I am in the cab now. I am coordinating with Junesh”, Janford said.

Prabhu D and Junesh were waiting for him as his cab turned into the driveway of the new building. Introductions finished, they led him to their new network monitoring room. Janford was made to sit in a new chair at the head of the table.

“Well I see you have taken my words seriously”, Janford said.

Prabhu D and Junesh were midway to showing-off to Janford the place where the universal monitor would be fitted, when Junesh’s phone rang.

“They are ready to power down the devices in the old building”, Junesh said passing on the info to Janford.

They all hustled down to the old building which was in the next block. They entered the datacenter with all the devices whirring in the air-conditioned room. His boss was hovering over one of the devices.

“I hope all backups are taken as we are commencing the activity now”, his boss said and the power was turned off.

The entire room was silent apparent to the loss of the equipment, a couple of heaves and hoes could be heard as boxes were being packed and shoved towards the trucks. Janford, Junesh and Prabhu D tagged a few loose ends as the equipment would need to power ON and cables re-plugged into the correct ports.

Overnight the boxes would be shifted to the premises with the new racks. Siva in the night shift would supervise from the network team stand point. They had dinner together at a local canteen, Siva joined them too. Janford paid the bill but made sure that he got the printed receipt.

“Where would I get a hotel”, Janford said.

He wasn’t interested in the answers. Someone offered Janford to stay at their place too. Janford was sure he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He knew there was always a sick-bay in the premises and he knew there would be empty beds in them rooms - heck, the entire building was empty.

“Call me one hour before we are ready to power up the devices”, Janford continued to instruct Siva before exiting with his singular trolley-bag, “Unless they need a decision made while mounting the devices into the new datacenter.”

In the elevator, instead of pressing the down arrow he pushed the lift towards the empty bunk beds in the restroom which his company termed as ‘RELAX ROOMS’. Janford had all the floor layouts as he had floor-wise maps. Je mad memorized that the relax room were left off the switch room. The huge network switches which provided physical connectivity to the PCs on this floor. He noticed that the entire floor was newly furnished.

At 5 a.m Siva gave him a wake-up call, “The devices are now in the new racks.”

 The night shift had done a great job. Janford freshened up and entered the datacenter and saw Siva and one of the daily wage labourers were screwing in a foot-long cuboid router onto the rack.

“That’s ok, we wanted the equipment moved into their positions during the night, the connectivity and in fixtures can be done by the next shift”, Janford said as he helped them finish off the router they had started mounting.

“Hope you got some shut-eye”, Janford asked Siva later as they were having coffee from the steel barrel mounted atop a bicycle.

“Yes, I did sleep and got up when I called you. I had entered the datacenter and saw they were moving all the packaging material out of the datacenter.”

“Good, a forty-five minute power nap is always needed in the night shift. Call it an extended break”, Janford continued, “Of course don’t take it to avoid work. That will land you into trouble.”

Janford asked Siva to give the next shift a wake-up call, and leave for the day. Prabhu D and Junesh arrived in sometime and all three worked to put the devices in series or parallels as per the printed sheets which Janford had made them print two days in advance – before the printers were dismantled and taken off the network and onto the new premises.

Along with an Idli breakfast and pulling the tagged cables into the planned matching ports, it took them almost until noon to get the devices passively connected. Only after the power was turned on would they understand whether their connectivity was useful or not.

“Please pray to your own Gods, so that all of the equipment comes online without any problems”, Janford’s boss said as they all checked the LEDs on their respective devices.

A secondary path device was showing delay in the ping response. That is when they realized that the MUX on the physical layer was down. They all followed their boss’s gaze towards one of the towering devices. It lay silent. In fifteen minutes Janford was having lunch with Junesh and Siva.

“If we would lie around there, we too would start to feel the heat”, Janford continued, “Either from the boss’s tantrum or some work, just coz we were there.”

While they ate in merriment, Janford called up the central Network Team and informed them about the secondary path failure and the cause too. He told them to capture a few current logs and compare with the ones taken prior to the scheduled activity.

                “One of you go home, lets keep one person in each shift” Janford said.

                “Part expected from Bangalore”, Filipa had sent an SMS.

                Janford took a bus to Koyembedu Terminus. He wandered into the few hotels near the bus terminal which he had checked-out earlier.

                “You will get bus service to Vailankanni to reach for morning prayers”, one of the receptionists said.

                Janford hurried back to the terminus where he got a sleeper, which was oh so very comfortable that he felt revitalized when the bus conductor woke him up at the Vailankanni bus stand.

                He entered into one of the hotels and was ushered into a room upstairs where he could stow away his luggage. Janford knowing the language got the room charged to him on an hourly basis. He freshened up and got a good view of the church façade. The night-lights turned off as he took a few  photos on his phone.

                He looked at the photos as he strolled towards the beach behind the church. The east-coast rising sun was one of the things he was waiting for, he compared it to the sunrises off the west-coast, which he faced when he was home. This one was far better.

                He attended the morning mass and had some Pongal for breakfast. He took the next bus home. The return journey was rather tedious as the bus intertwined all villages which were awake now, as compared to the night journey he had undertaken. It was his tiredness too. He looked at his mobile screen in read 09:23 Mon 01-May-2012.

 

 

Part four: Labour Union Rules!

After a refreshing sleep from an excruciatingly long bus journey which seemed to have made stops at all the villages which were bustling with activity as compared to the night trip, Janford, slept like a log in the hotel he had recced near Koyambedu Bus Terminus.

He checked-out of the hotel and made sure he had picked up the hotel bill. He entered the office premises.

“Lets get to the meeting room”, Janford said.

Their boss had called them all for a group huddle before they left Chennai.

“All applications including XXX are working fine”, Prabhu said in the meeting room.

“And did we understand why we faced a problem with that application even after all was reported working fine”, his boss said.

“The user was on the old network”, Junesh continued, “He had come in from a long leave and was trying to connect via an old IP address.”

“But we haven’t changed our IP address schematics”, their boss said.

“Yes, but this department wanted an extension of department and the old IP address subnet was not big enough, so we had allocated a bigger subnet”, Junesh said.

“Yes, it was an addendum to the plan”, another Chennai IT personnel said.

“I would like to add something”, Janford continued, “I see that all parts of the process includes Network Team involvement, yet only three guys run the show.”

Junesh and Prabhu D looked at each other.

    “Does anyone know what it was a holiday yesterday?”, Janford said.

                “Yes it was Maharashtra Day yesterday”, his bossed said.

                “It was celebrated as Labour day in Philippines”, Filipa said.

“Yes it is celebrated as Labour Day in most countries around the globe, but here in India, I see that due to some language gap the translation from the port city of Mumbai where labour unions were in large numbers, came out as a state holiday rather than a national one. Not to point fingers but this is me talking from as foreigner’s point of view.”

All looked at Janford. Filipa said,” What has a holiday got to do with Network team but?”

“I have taken keen interest in this migration activity and seen a few things. I was up and about Vailankanni yesterday being a holiday in my country, but here the network team put in extra-hours, Janford continued, “All along the way I observed workers doing their job. The good-fellow next to me in the bus explained that, the entire country seems to have little or no respect towards skilled workers.”

Janford raised his hand, “Let me explain”, he said.

“I have led the law makers back in my country and hence say that any physical work being done needs to be collated into Labour Act. And because of the mac-address engraved on the LAN card of every network device, Network engineers fall into skilled-labourers.

                “But they come under IT”, Janford’s boss said.

                “Yet they are needed to monitor each and every mac-address on this new setup”, Janford continued, “The earth when covered with footballs is the number of devices that can be  connected to each other at any time, thanks to the mac-address. And these mac-address are handled by the network team.

                “So they oversee the PCs which are connected floor-wise to the switches, onto the routers, followed by inter-city connectivity, and then the connectivity to the opposite-B-end machine, the application running on it. And Wi-Fi too.”, Janford said.

                No one said anything. Bolstered by the silence Janford continued, “And the Chennai branch hands the overlooking of all this infrastructure to people who are working without holidays”

                “Chennai operations are 24x5”, another IT personnel said.

                “So two days are off right, but come any Monday morning would you like our customers to suffer just because the Network engineer on the shift-duty is sick”, Janford continued, “We have outsourced their job to a third-party vendor who would send someone who knows the technology but will he know the building layout or where the keys to a rack are kept? Is it sensible to outsource such a sensitive role?”

                “Even in my Philippines branch the network team is outsourced,” Filipa said.

                “Outsourcing works well when the design is robust, yet over here, one sick guy can cause the Chennai branch to stall. By what means should we to motivate the replacement engineer that extra hours of work would not hamper his health too, including night shifts in a rotational format.”

                Janford paused.

                “I have faced the same questions while writing the bill which has been passed as law. In my country adherence to strict guidelines for fair practices, perks, leaves requirements, emergency funds, medical reimbursements, job fulfillment, salaries, and overtime stipulations are mandatory.”

                “And these are all available to outsourced employees too”, Janford’s boss said.

                “So then outsourcing is not a problem, right?” Filipa said.

                “Outsourced or core employees, once aggravated, can litigate and prove their physical work in night shifts caused them bodily harm would defame any company”, Janford continued, “Outsourced or not, Union laws guide us from the point of bringing content to the life of a fellow human-being. And not outsourcing physically demanding jobs helps in fewer job hunts, fewer relocations, better innovative ideas from the individuals and holistically speaking a more stable environment.”

                “So I would like to propose an actionable flag to contemplate night shift allowances not only as a perk but also on receiving it the engineer would have accepted the indemnity of the rotational shift”, Janford said.

                Filipa on getting back to the Philippines, was given a project to suck-in the network operations into the core-employment. There were a greater number of Network Team recruits too, with night shift allowances to remove any discriminating differentiation.

 

 

 

Part five: The Official’s Wife

 

“And you call yourself an ethical person”, Prita said.

Prita saw her husband using the home printer. He had stuck a piece of a roll acquired from a credit card machine to the A4 size home printer paper, and was aligning it.

“Yeah, I need to cover the flight charges – the one which I missed due to office work”, Janford continued, “I was called to office on the day of my travel, and the workload made me miss my flight.

“But you are falsifying documents”, Prita said.

“I did stay in the office for two days and saved on the hotel bills plus I traveled by public State transport buses, so that it evens out” Janford continued, “Check out the total, its equal to what I spent not one buck more”

                “I see, so your logic that since you are worth every penny in skilled-labour, you are allowed to tell lies”, Prita said.

                “Yes I am worth every penny, and no, I am not lying, just manipulating a few things to get my dues. I cannot tell the truth to my boss and even if he approves it after some coaxing, the system will not validate a reimbursement request for a flight not caught”, Janford said.

                “So you are saying that a little bit of lying is okay, if the cause is good”, Prita said.

                They usually had these arguments which led towards spiritual morals. Prita being a staunch catholic, was implying that, few of the other religions preached that lying was okay, if it was for a good cause.

                “Do not go that-a-way”, Janford continued, “I just made a trip to Vaialnkanni.”

                “So that means you are now a good catholic?” Prita said.

                “I also saw the Ram-sethu from the aero plane”, Janford said.

                Janford was referring to the Hindu mythology inkling that a land bridge existed between the Indian mainland and Sri Lanka. He laughed at his own uncanny humour.

                “Did you see the photo I sent you?” Janford continued, “The façade of the church was lit up and soon after I took the pic they were turned off as the sun rose.

                Janford scrolled to the photo on his phone and showed it to Prita.

                “And look at the unblemished sunrise”, he continued, “Vailankanni is off the east coast, you know.”

                “I know, the sun rises in the east, ya da ya da ya da” Prita continued, “You have been telling me this since we are married.

                “Yes, see the restaurant where we had coffee for the first time”, Janford said still showing Prita the photos on his phone.

                Prita had now cuddled up to him. And Janford kissed her on her cheek.

                “So how was the trip. Hope you did not rifle up any feathers”, she said.

                “I did, I showed those guys there that, they have a flawed system”, Janford said.

                Prita had missed Janford and her loins were aching for his touch. So she played along, “What did you do?”, she said.

                “The guy besides me in the bus from Vailankanni was from Mumbai, and he pointed out to me that in the State of Maharashtra, they had a holiday on 1^st May for Maharashtra Day, and then since all of the different language translations, it remained a State holiday while the rest of the country forgot about Labour Day”, Janford said.

                Prita had had enough of Labour Laws and Bills and papers lying around the house. She took the cue and started undressing. Janford too started undressing.

 

--- THE END ---

 

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