When work goes wrong Lesson 4 of the adult life course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Sometimes work goes wrong: a firm cuts jobs, a factory closes, someone is sacked, workers go on strike, or a grown-up is simply worn out. 1 Grown-ups often use soft words for these things, like "letting people go" or "between jobs", so it is worth knowing what they really mean. 2 Picture a kitchen in Adelaide: Dad comes off the phone pale and says "They're letting people go", and later that night the kids hear Mum and Dad talking quietly about saving money in case it's him. 3 These things are worrying, but they are almost never anyone's fault at home, and most families get through them. 4 There are also ways workers stand up for themselves: unions, strikes, picket lines and tribunals. 5 "Letting people go" means a company is ending some workers' jobs, usually to cut costs; it sounds gentle but people lose their jobs. 6 Redundancy means the job itself is being got rid of, not that the person did anything wrong; people who have worked there a while often get some money to help them. 7 Being sacked or fired means losing a job because of something the person did, such as often being late or breaking rules; employers usually have to give warnings first. 9 While a parent is unemployed the family may claim benefits and cut spending; free fun like parks and libraries helps. 10 A trade union is a group of workers who each pay a small fee so they can talk to bosses together about pay and conditions. 11 One worker alone has little power, but many together are much harder to ignore. 12 A strike is when workers agree together to stop working to push their employer about pay or conditions; they are not paid while on strike. 13 In the UK a strike is legal after a vote, and the disruption is deliberate so that people notice. 14 A picket line is striking workers standing outside their workplace with signs, peacefully asking others not to go in. 15 Burnout means being worn down by too much work and stress for too long, until even small tasks feel huge. 16 When a business closes, everyone who works there loses their job; if it was a big employer, a whole town feels it. 17 An employment tribunal is a kind of court for work disputes, such as being sacked unfairly or not being paid what is owed. ← previous Finding a job and getting onnext → Where money comes from↑ back to Adult life This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/4-when-work-goes-wrong/