Having just taken over as editor of Personnel Today sister title Employers Law, and also being responsible for the legal pages of Personnel Today itself, I'm drowning not waving in the murky creature infested pool that is employment law.
But it always help to have a familiar face when contemplating a new landscape. And I think I've found one: that fictional hero of 1980s' corporate greed and devil take the hindmost managerial skills Gordon Gekko is back.
And he's back in droves. And possibly in a lift near you, at least if you work in the City.
According to the City rumour mill a Gordon Gekko type moment took place in a City bank recently when a junior trader at an investment bank stepped into a lift to find the firm's boss there with him.
He asked him about lay-offs at the firm and a restructuring of the business. His boss's response? "You're sacked". When the lift reached their floor Gekko de nos jours said "stay there", pressed the button for the ground floor and strode off into the dealing room.
An apocryphal tale but there must be many more around the City these days with 300 jobs a week going. Citigroup has shed 1,500 jobs, Swiss bank UBS 800 and Merrill Lynch 600. Among those getting the chop was the head of Barclays' collateralised debt obligations operations.
With titles like that no wonder the world economy is creaking.
Still a sense of gallows humour prevails with the rapid employee removals business is referred to as "black bagging", as sacked employees are told to put their belongings in black bin bags and are marched out of their offices by security men.
Not so much employment law as sod's law.
