HMV fought the law…

My murky former employers are in trouble again! It seems that HMV Kettering have landed themselves in a spot of bureaucratic bother:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8377024.stm

Apparently they were having a signing by Britain’s Got Talent ‘star’ Faryl Johnson (presumably that’s pronounced ‘for-real’ – ugh!), when she unexpectedly sang one of her own songs. Kettering council responded with outrage, as the store don’t have a performance licence. HMV refused to pay for one retrospectively (brave manager!), pledging to fight this one in court.

Now, normally, I’d be dead against Kettering council on this, and would have to call them a bunch of killjoy jobsworths. But then I reflected on HMV’s redundancy payment to me. I’d been working for them for 9 years and 11 months when they made me redundant. “Pretty please,” I asked on bended knee (metaphorically), “could I have ten years worth of redundancy payments instead of the statutory minimum of 9 complete years’ service?”

Now for those unfamiliar with UK redundancy law, the statutory minimum is one week’s wages per complete year’s service. And I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s worked for HMV that the letter of the law was what they stuck to, giving me 9 years’ worth (ie 9 weeks worth) of wages despite my being only three weeks away from ten years’ service. Well, they were having enough financial woes without losing another couple of hundred quid, weren’t they?

So in the same spirit of honouring the law completely, I’m bound to say – “Go get ‘em Kettering Council, you joyless bunch of automata!”