Grooms strike? Press statement

At the tote were we are, the grooms even have punters,get rid of the lot .

yes grooms arent paid bombs,but as in all industries its a pretty low entry job..its not exactly highly skilled labour is it..the highly experienced good ones are definately looked after well by trainers as they are a valuable commodity and if they werent would just move on to another trainer..

Craig, i know there are some very good grooms but my point is that without a framework & proper development the stutus quo will remain. Imagine that all your grooms were as good as your top 5........ That can only happen with trainers/owners making a stand and ensuring that change happens. It is the duty of every employer to develop staff & i understand that you get those who cant & those who wont, it becomes easy once you remove those who wont & reward those cant but want help & go on to improve?achieve......... Same in many industries....

What a lots of bollocks.....no strike tomorrow.plenty put into the grooms school ...good old saying "u take the horse to water u can't always make it drink"......

Great logic West your staff must love you....

Tigershark Wrote:

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> Great ligic West your staff must love you....


They all do.....well looked after and they work and love their job.....unfortunately you obviously haven't been down to a work track for a while and see the frustration that the trainers have to endure on a daily basis with the apathetic approach that most of the grooms have.....as I said most ,not all.

I have never had to go to a work track to learn leadership skills, "A Fish rots from the HEAD"

By your rationale the grooms arrive, do what they want and trainers are frustrated because they cannot do anything about it. Enough said, let the strike continue & maybe Tinkerbell will come and save the day, change all the bad grooms to good ones...

There should be a benchmark set and potential grooms should be "apprenticed" at the Grooms School before they are given a job at a trainers yard...it seems to be exactly the opposite is happening at the moment.
Once the groom has achieved the minimum qualification standard, he should get a basic wage that is predetemined and thereafter he should be afforded the opportunity to become more skilled.

Craig Eudey is of the opinion that quality of grooms has dropped so much over the last 30 years and that grooms of today ofeten would not have been allowed anywhere near to a horse! What's that say about him as an employer with all due respect. It the same as saying to a mechanic that because refuses to be apprenticed he'll still be allowed to work and mess up an expensive car.

SA Horseracing at the top level is often struggling so it is no surprise that very little is done to improve the level of our grooms by putting all the necessary foundations in place in order to benefit racing as a whole...for the owner, trainer and the groom.

Perpetual, the horses have to be fed, worked, mucked out,cleaned, taken to the races etc so you take what you are offered and you cannot force them to go to grooms school. Either we take those who come to look for work and try and teach them or close down. Take your pick! I will take them to at least try and keep going.

I have to be honest and say I find these debates very odd. If you have spent any decent amount of time in SA, let alone lived there, then you do not have to be a brain surgeon or an eye specialist to know that a large number of SA citizens are not the hardest working bunch you will come across in the world and even more so, they don't exactly seem to care too much about how well they do their job. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I have been to 40 odd countries and nowhere have I seen a less hard working set... NOT ALL!!!! this is generally speaking. IMHO TS it matters not a whole lot about leadership skills, nor does it matter too much about the profession involved, it is the mind-set and the mind-set generally is I'll do what I want, when I want, and as little as possible but I want my wage packet and... actually... I want more. If you give me more, I won't do more I will probably do less and complain more because I see that as the way of getting as much possible for doing as little as possible.

Genuinely no offence meant to anyone but that is honestly as I see it.

How to say this correctly... So we have a generation of skilled grooms dying due to this devastating virus. Job spaces are left open for this reason and more. Here is the problem and rightly identified but almost impossibly fixed in SA... Replacement. The little kid(Jack) that dropped out of school in the Transkei and did odd jobs until 16 or 18 or whatever young age now gets pressurised to find an income. His neighbors cousin(John) works with horses, so John takes Jack to Summerveld as his brother where he is apprenticed. A couple months later Jack enters the labor force on min grooms wage and so his pursuits continue. So well and easily said, let the trainers stand together and not employ a groom unless he has been qualified in a grooms school but who that has the education or ability to develop wants to do an apprenticeship which will earn him a spot in a job that pays around R2000 pm? Ok so let's pay them more. How can the industry stay alive if our stakes are where they are and our grooms are paid an extra, lets say R1500 pm? Yes that will increase the quality of groom. But better offer bottom of the ladder jobs to otherwise unskilled and unemployed people and keep the industry alive than kill ourselves and our industry working for a people who WILL ALWAYS DEMAND MORE. Look at the mines.
Let you smart crackers get into a stable yard and start educating and training the grooms that we work with. PLEASE!! The industry provides a job in its space in the SA workforce, please let those who have the ability to do so move onto greater things, like many have, or let those who can't, appreciate that they have a meal and somewhere to stay when they would otherwise be on the streets.

Englander
I am not going to disagree with you.

Whilst there are various opinions on the matter, let me say that efficiency levels in a production (factory ) environment has decreased from around the 87% levels in the early 90's to around 60% currently and has not improved significantly since.
This was all due to the "go slows" and strikes during the late apartheid era.

That mindset is still there.