John Nutter "Nutter"

Nutter?

What can you same about him? He's a hard worker, never been afraid of a bit of hard graft in his life. Will give his colleagues a helping hand without thinking about it, unlike some. John is pretty much "what you see is what you get", hard working, helpful, and relatively quite spoken and mannered. Not often that you see him get agitated, most of the time he's quite placid. He's had quite a hard working life, as his face shows literally.

Years ago he was the victim of an accident that evaporated his faith in union's, and it was hardly surprising. Before the type's of lighting generators we have today, we used to have one's that you cranked to start which were mounted on a wheeled frame that you could push along much like a wheelbarrow, and before them there were some big old green ones that you cranked to start, mounted on a 4 wheeled frame.

It was one of these last one's that was the source of much pain and discomfort over the years to him. One night they were going through the worksite starting the generators up, when one of the cranking handles became stuck and proceeded to spin like a propeller blade. He saw some staff in the vacinity, and moved forward and shouted a warning to them to get out of the way. As he did so, the crank handle and generator parted company and he was struck straight between the eyes by the crank handle which resulted in severe and extensive damage to his face.

At the time he was a union member, and a claim for compensation was initiated. The faulty generator disappeared with out trace never to see the light of day again, and the union eventually told him that they wouldnt progress his case despite available eye witness evidence, expert advice and medical opinion. This was a blow for him, and one that rocked his faith in unions for ever. He didnt give up though, and ended up having to fight the case on his own, a process that became that much harder and difficult without the unions backing. He won eventually, no thamks to the union.

The union clearly let one of its members down very badly that day, speculation as to the reason why could go on and on, back-handers, union officials in the managements mockets, any number of things. One thing is clear, at the time the union was a extremely poor performer when it came to provision of services to its members, protecting its members interests, instead it collected union dues off of members effectively but did not want to do a lot else. Times have changed somewhat, the union has placed far more priority on the services it provides to members and looks to represent their interests far better than in the past.

No real down side, perhaps only that at times he's inclined to get a bee in his bonet sometimes over things, sometimes its a result of getting the wrong end of the handle on something.

An old dog soon to retire, mid October.