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JD
The drums were beating and trepidation stalked the well-carpeted corridors and open-plan office cubicles at the Department of Not Doing Much (DNDM), whose motto, “Don’t do much, but do it well” had only cost $500,000 in development fees to the outsourced marketing whizz kids, who often charged more for doing such things, so it was a bargain really.
Additionally, the motto’s punchiness was the envy of several other departments. Particularly the Department of Doing Even Less, from which DNDM had been spun off during the Ardern/Robertson years when doing more (but not much more) was clearly better, so one-upping them was a bonus.
DNDM, staff 105, annual salary bill $14 million (not counting the $10 million extra for KiwiSaver, leave liabilities, consultants, contractors, office space, IT, travel and overheads), occupied floors 13 and 14 of the Charles Fergusson Building (annual equivalent rental cost of $2 million).
This accommodation was not sufficiently ostentatious to be flying above the radar on the top floors, unlike those management team idiots over at the Wellington City Council – talk about putting your head above the parapet unnecessarily – but it was certainly a cut above the worker bees droning closer to the ground below and not something to be eschewed lightly unless you were on a flexi-day, thank you very much.
And the cause of the disturbance of the DNDM hive-mind? The arrival of a memo to all staff from the office of the department head: He who had Risen to the Top (HRT), through the two key attributes of any senior government department manager: length of tenure and the convenient fact that his brother in law played golf with Sir Brian (Roche that is, not Epstein, famous manager of the Beatles. Sir Brian had a file-like memory for which department head was to be transferred across to where at least three moves ahead).
The memo from HRT was explicit: “Minister Willis has decreed that there will be a reduction in public service headcount of roughly 14 per cent and we must ensure that all our services are made as efficient as possible so as to achieve our goals (which are to resist this as far as we are able, of course, being the implied sub-text).
As a result the 14.7 headcount equivalents at DNDM, who had self-identified as most vulnerable (strictly between ourselves, of course, but not to anyone else because we’re not quite as stupid as we look – indeed who could be?), were gathered in meeting room three to discuss the problem and how it could best be overcome (if the worst came to the worst and they were unable to ignore it, that is).
Mx 0.7 headcount equivalent spoke first given that it was they, as the latest DEI hire, whom was most likely to meet the axe – if anyone was.
The first thing we must do is contact the union. I believe the PSA has a template letter that spells out why any attempt to cut back headcount in any department is an affront to humanity in general, women and other minorities in particular and Palestinian refugees in the specific.
This angle will be our piece de resistance (for indeed comrades, a Resistance, with a capital R is what we are, and, without the capital letter and the indefinite article preceding it, is what we do best).
So, as to pretend we wrote it ourselves, we could issue that template letter on DNDM letterhead (designed for a paltry $50,000 on top of the DNDM logo development costs, and even more of a bargain – as was said at the time).
There is a risk of course that 38 such similar letters, one from each department, when accidentally leaked to the state broadcasters, TVNZ and RNZ, at the exact same time, will be recognised by them and other organs of the mainstream media as a coordinated campaign of self-preservation.
But, in reality they’ll probably just put any inference of coincidence down as a conspiracy theory foisted upon NZ by the Atlas Foundation and instead view it as a spontaneous outpouring of collective angst on behalf of the poor and needy of NZ (amongst whom we will shortly be counted if we don’t get this right).
Meanwhile, over at the PSA – current staff 223 persons, annual salaries bill $25 million (paid for by the union members whose headcount the PSA, consequently, has a vested interest in increasing) and headquartered in Aurora Terrace, conveniently located within walking distance of parliament, treasury, multiple ministries and several cafés capable of sustaining industrial relations negotiations through artisanal coffee alone – they were wrestling with an existential conundrum.
A significant proportion of Wellington’s economy now appears to involve government employees negotiating pay rises with unions who also represent government employees funded by taxpayers, many of whom are also government employees – but how long can this merry-go-round continue?
Head-spinning stuff indeed and proof positive why only the best and brightest can hope to become a union official – intergenerational and inter-industry motto – “The working class can kiss my [redacted], I’ve got the union job at last.”
However, as a consequence of the time spent within the PSA on the this existential debate, they had no time or resources left over to search out the aforementioned template letter and so Mx 0.7 and their 14 other threatened fellow attendees over at DNDM were forced to come up with their own ideas.
(The irony here, that if they had already been coming up with their own ideas within DNDM for the betterment of the NZ taxpayer then there might not have been a need for headcount reductions in the first place, was, sadly, lost on the group.)
“How’s about this then,” said Mx 0.7 (inadvertently echoing some dead British TV personality):
It’s a well-recognised fact that no civil servant can effectively handle more that 10 memos per working day (unless of course that working day is a home-based, flexi-day, in which case that capacity drops to five or less given all the other distractions that working from home exposes one to).
So if each of you writes me one memo per day then that increases my workload to the point where 0.7 of one headcount equivalent can’t possibly handle it. Indeed, simple math, based on these figures, shows the need for a minimum extra 0.3 and, voila, I’m now a whole one.
(And wait, dear reader – before you question the maths by saying ‘But what was Mx 0.7 doing before the extra 14 memos/day started arriving?’ – the answer is nothing.)
Indeed, within the Department of Not Doing Much, it has long been seen as imperative that extra auxiliary headcounts are carried just in case there is a request that the department do a little more – we call this contingency planning – and it all counts towards DNDM’s theoretical headcount number).
But, hang on, as one of the other threatened 14 pointed out, if they write one extra memo per day that boosts their workload by 12 per cent. And that, across the 14 of them means an extra 1.7 person equivalents will be needed to address this increased output. So, Mx 0.7, if you add that 1.7 to your 0.3 we come up with a need for an extra two whole headcount equivalents already.
And that, in reality, is where the magic happens. This dawned upon them like the light emanating from Moses descending from Mt Sinai with the Tablets of Stone, smiles and high-fives broke out around the room.
If you apply this ‘one extra memo per day’ across the whole memo writing staff at DNDM (which isn’t all of them of course as some don’t produce memos themselves, but are simply employed to read those of others) then you come up with a requirement for – amazing coincidence – exactly 14.7 extra employees!
And there you have the answer to the Minister Willis’s conundrum. We can prove that, by simply not employing that extra 14.7 equivalents, we have effectively reduced our theoretical headcount by this number, which is the exact cut that She-Who-Must-Be-Ignored is demanding in the first place.
The final results? Mx 0.7 was made up to 1.0, which, luckily for them, made no difference to any inconvenience they might have suffered as they chose to spend the extra 0.3 working from home, anyway. But at least their salary went up by 30 per cent – so good news really.
The other ‘threatened 14’ employees leaned in and actually did produce that extra memo per day, until the next election and the threat went away. At which point they went back to doing what they were doing before, which, unsurprisingly in the Department of Not Doing Much, was – you guessed it – not much.
HRT was hailed by the government for cutting his (theoretical) DNDM headcount by the required 14 per cent and, at the same time, by the PSA and his fellow department heads for not cutting his (actual) headcount at all – a win-win outcome for all concerned.
And Minister Willis? Once the November election was over, she shelved the headcount reduction idea and went back to the tried and true fix for all NZ’s fiscal ills. She borrowed the money instead and left the problem for the next generation of politicians to wrestle with and this generation’s children to pay for.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose – indeed!
