A few years ago, after one of the many ‘restructures,it’ I volunteered for the Council’s early retirement scheme. They call it ELI or ‘Early Leavers Initiative’. It gives staff over 55 years old, the opportunity to leave before their official retirement age. The main aim of the scheme is to save money and its premise is that it is cheaper to let staff retire with a offered financial package than it is to keep them employed. It has worked well for all the people that I know that have taken up the offer.

At the time, my application was turned down on the basis that the department did not have any staff that could be trained up quickly enough, to do the work that I was doing. Therefore, they couldn’t authorise it. I spoke to our HR department at the end of February this year about applying again and was advised that they didn’t know if the initiative would be running this year.

Last week, we had one of our regular ‘doom and gloom’ meetings, where we were told how bad the budget was, how much we had to save this year, and the next three years. All told, it does not look good for local Councils in the future. In almost a passing shot, at the end of the meeting, our Service Lead announced that he would support any member of the team wishing to take this ELI. Basically saying, anyone who wants it can have it.

So after talking to K***, we have decided that it probably would be for the best to jump before I get pushed, so to speak. It would mean a great reduction in monthly income, but I would look for a part-time job to help make up for that. Let’s face it, I’m not happy in the job anymore. I haven’t been so for a long time. I’m starting to be at that age when learning new things becomes a real challenge and I simply cannot keep up with the pace now. Then of course, if the future does mean losing staff, I would have to go. What usually happens, is that a post is deleted and staff at the same level have to reapply for their jobs. It happens all the time and given the fact that the people I would be up against having more experience of the work we are doing … speaks for itself who would lose out.

So that’s all I’m going say on the matter (for now!)