Permanent work? Really?! - working at the 2012 Olympics

This morning, as I wandered round with my classic combo of tea and toast, I heard on the news about stadiums being taken apart and sold off in little bits after the London 2012 Olympics. Now this piqued my curiosity, as I had not exactly thought that they would keep everything (seeing how long it took them to find a good use for the 'Millennium Dome'..) but being that they keep going on about the number of permanent jobs will provide, I started to wonder how.

In 2009, Gordon Brown was quoted saying 'there will be 50,000 jobs permanently created as a result of the facilities the site will make possible for the future.' But surely, with the some of the sites themselves not being permanent, how can the jobs be?

On browsing the Olympics website, you can look for jobs involved just in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies or you can just look generally for work with LOCOG. There are, in fairness, a huge range of jobs that people can apply for but I can't help noting that many of them, such as 'diving technical operations manager' or 'sailing village manager' must obviously only last for the duration of the games. On the job description itself however, it says that the type of job is 'permanent'. There cannot be assured work as a 'diving technical operations manager' after the Olympics games has finished can there? I doubt they can guarantee further employment in each employee's specific field after everything has finished..

There seem to be mixed reactions towards the 2012 Games in general-on one hand, you have people commenting on articles about it saying that they couldn't care less or people tweeting about how much of a let down it's going to be, much like the Royal Wedding is being treated by some. On the other hand, London2012 has 62,210 followers on Twitter and there most tweets on the Olympics 'trend' seem to be positive. There are some that say these people are just 'Y generation' and are getting all excited because this is all new for them but I'm not convinced these positive opinions can be apportioned entirely to this. Perhaps people are willing, albeit cautiously, to see what the Olympics brings for England and will wait and see how it will affect our economy, our employment and our lives in general.

It's probably worth mentioning that there is also a huge need for volunteers at London 2012 as well-around 70,000 apparently and I very much doubt they will be left short. As said on the website, this is a 'once in a lifetime experience' and to be fair, whether good or bad, working at the London Olympic games is not going to happen again in my lifetime certainly-so they do have a valid point!

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Comment by George McRobbie on March 25, 2011 at 1:33pm

The Olympics will be providing development to much needed areas of London.  Industries such as Leisure, Retail, Services will all be sure to have a presence near the Olympic site (where perhaps there was no motivation before) and as such housing developers will also be attracted to the area with the improvement in facilities, this in turn starts a cycle of increased Business in the area, schools, retail, hospital, etc, further encouraging more housing development.  Ultimately this results in more jobs that may not have come up had it not been for the Olympics.

 

Roles within LOCOG itself have (until recently/shortly - I will have to check) - have been classed as permanent as employees will be permanent employees of LOCOG, entitled to excellent benefits including healthcare, gym memberships, bonuses and pension schemes.  LOCOG and recruitment partners are very open about the fact that LOCOG will wind down operations towards the end of 2012 and cease to exist.  Outplacement services will also be offered to those "permanent" employees to help them find new roles much like any large multi-national organisation going through redundancies.

Comment by Emily Stevenson on March 28, 2011 at 9:55am
Thanks for the comment - I understand that LOCOG will bring a lot of good to London.. I was curious, from browsing their website and from questions I had received about it, if they could write 'job status: permanent' on a job description and what was meant by that.

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