The End of Men(60)
I am unsurprised and grateful that the director of the Indiana Working Draft is punctual. We need to know how she’s doing what she’s doing and there’s no time to spare. So far, we only have specific employment policies: all healthcare workers, member of the armed forces, civil service and the emergency services are required to work full-time, or part-time if they have dependents, until a broader working framework is created and passed by Parliament. Everyone else is free to work or not work as they see fit and it’s not functioning. The country is in dire straits.
It is very, very important that no one knows we’re talking to Jackie because a US-style working draft would be big news. No point panicking everyone until we know what’s going to happen. Gillian, as home secretary, will decide whether to move it forward; I’ll plan for any disruption it might cause.
Jackie Stockett is a busy lady; we’ve done well to get an appointment with her. I suppose the office of the Indiana Working Draft isn’t the place for slackers.
“Hello!” Jackie says.
“It’s very kind of you to give us some of your time, Jackie.”
“Too damn right I’m kind. The Patron Saint of Indiana.” She laughs and I see how this woman was able to create the world’s first working draft quicker than I was able to sort out bloody electricians.
“Right, you’ve got an hour of this saint’s time so tell me, what can I do to help?”
“Tell us everything you know,” Gillian, sat to my right, says, taking our discussion about asking open-ended questions a bit too far.
“We might be here a while.” Jackie claps her hands together. “Okay, let’s start at the end. The goal’s important, right? Here in the States we have the Human Scarcity Index, which you might have heard of.”
Uh, yeah. You could say that. It’s only been in every newspaper and magazine around the world as a symbol of humanity’s talent for adaptation or the end of days, depending on what you read. “Indiana is third in the table out of fifty-two states, and we have a lot less going for us historically than California and Illinois, the only two states that got us beat. Human resourcing isn’t just finding people jobs anymore. It’s a question of life or death. If garbage is on the streets, and bodies are piling up in homes, and factories aren’t producing medicines and delivery trucks aren’t getting food from farms to stores, people are going to die. It’s as simple as that. Third place means my state is surviving.”
Gillian interrupts Jackie’s speech. “Did you see the Plague coming? I mean, how much lead time did you have to prepare?”
Jackie laughs, a lovely, rich sound. “No, silly, I’m good at my job, not a witch. But I did see that once the Plague was here, we were going to need to change the job market real fast. I started off in Parks and Recreation, or Possums and Raccoons as people used to call it.”
I stifle a laugh. Gillian gives me a look.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling sheepish.
“You laugh at any jokes I trot out whenever you feel like it. Point is, Parks was always having its budget squeezed so I had to look ahead a lot. Sometimes I had to just ask for more money, there’s a few Indiana congresswomen still around who would happily never see my face again. I had to plan. May through September we needed double the staff than we did the other seven months of the year, and I was doing everything on a shoestring. Then the Plague came and Jesus, it was bad. I was head of human resources for the City Council of Bloomington. The private sector was a whole other mess but at the very least, every branch of city hall needed to continue to function with over half of its workforce—poof!—gone.”
I think back to the early days of the Plague with a familiar shudder. Men dropping off everywhere: the police, the armed forces, in every government department, every part of the civil service. Sudden gaps where crucial work simply wasn’t, and sometimes still isn’t, being done.
Jackie’s expression has gone from one of enthusiasm to exhaustion; even recalling the panic and sheer grind of those weeks is tiring. “Indiana already had one of the worst gender pay gaps in the country and a shortage of skilled workers back when this whole damn mess began. We didn’t have a head start, put it that way. But we did have two things: me and Mary Ford. She was head of human resources in Indianapolis, and before that we worked together for ten years here in Bloomington. Mary should be here with me but she got nabbed by Nebraska.” Jackie nods as though her friend is there. “I’m just saying, it’s important you know. I didn’t do it alone.”
Gillian looks at me with an awed expression; it’s rare to see anyone sharing credit for anything in civil service. Jackie’s a good egg.
“Mary and I sat down and made a plan to resource our cities, our schools, our hospitals, our police departments, fire stations, oh God, the list was endless. The army had its own plan in place, although it took them long enough to get ahold of themselves.”
“How do you get people to keep working with sick relatives, or when grieving?” I ask. This is the issue we’re finding the most difficult. Can we really stomach requiring a woman whose husband or son or father or, God forbid, all three, are dying to work despite it?
“We have bereavement exceptions, but you still have to work at least two days a week. That’s just the way it is. No one was turning up to work and everything shut down. I mean I get it. One woman who worked with me in Parks, Angela, had five sons. Five! I can’t imagine what she was going through.”