Strike

I was hopeless with money at this stage of my life, it was a constant struggle and I was running an overdraft. The staff at APPH were paid once per calendar month, and usually by then I was two weeks in the hole with my overdraft.

All is easy in retrospect, I could have fixed that situation in less than a month by simply stopping drinking or eating out. I call this the "putting down the spade" process where you simply stop digging the hole and allow the money to catch up.

It was the fall of 1983 and our union, TASS, had positioned itself to strike, I knew that after all the pain, there may be benefit, however, I was already in a bad financial position when suddenly, we were out on strike.

This brought back bad memories for me, the strike at Gullicks had been a success, yet within four months of it ending, thirty percent of the office was unemployed, the feelings of deja vu and the shortening days of late fall 1983 made the future look bleak.