For too long henchman have suffered appalling working conditions; from unsafe buildings to arbitrary violence from the management. They are trying to form a union with a list of demands including health care.
As with all other service industry workers, henchmen feel they are undervalued, suffer from poor working arrangements and frequently have to work in dangerous conditions. In an attempt to tackle these issues they are forming a union. Ronnie ‘Knuckles’ Fowler is a spokesperson for the Association of General Baddies and Henchmen (AGBH). “There are all types of henchmen from yer basic thug who carries out a bit of knee-capping and restraining victims while the gaffer beats the shit out of them, to the more techniciologiogical ones who build them laser weapon thingies for the nut job megalomaniac boss types”.
He outlined how they all had a lot in common, “It’s simple really. Our quality of life ain’t valued innit. For many there’s no clear training and career progression. Pay can extremely variable and intermittent. That ain’t any good if you’ve got ankle biters at home”.
Training and equipment
The ones doing the high tech stuff usually gain the skills before they become henchmen. For the rest they just have to pick up skills as they go along. This ad-hoc training can lead to a lot of mistakes leading to injury and death. While people might find it funny when a henchman’s gun jams and Steven Seagal shoots him, training on gun maintenance could have avoided that. There is also a woeful lack of facilities for firing range practice. People wonder why 10 henchmen can’t hit Jason Statham while every one of his shots finds a target. Training! That is why one of their demands is mandatory paid practice time on the range.
Dangerous building design
Different sectors have different challenges. For the henchmen working in the high end lairs of the master criminals one of the commonest concerns is the lack of control over building designs. There have been numerous incidents of buildings exploding because of dangerous oversights. Fowler recalls that his uncle was working security for some corrupt Bolivian General. “He was at this fancy building out in the desert. Turns out that the nutter who designed the place filled it with flammable fuel. Some bloke starts a gunfight and the whole fucking place goes up”.
A few years Fowler was working security for an outfit called SPECTRE at a place out in the Sahara. “I should have checked who built that place. Must have been the same guy who did that place in Bolivia”. The same thing happened to Fowler that happened to his uncle, the whole place went up in a fireball.
Basic design and compartmentation of flammable materials could have avoided that.
Health and safety in the workplace
The litany of appalling workplace health and safety practices that have led to injury or death is long. One of the most dramatic example is in the storage of hazardous materials. Not only are they accidents waiting to happen, it almost seems like they have been placed deliberately for maximum carnage.
The relatives of Boris Ivanovich Grishenko feel that his death was wholly avoidable. He died at a satellite station in Severnaya, Siberia. His mother said that he loved the job, “He liked computers and loved puzzles so the job was perfect for him”. The details are sketchy, although somebody has tried to piece together the events leading up to his death.
His mother doesn’t really think the British secret agent who attacked the satellite station was really to blame. “Sure he damaged the place, but ultimately it was the imbecile who placed large tanks of liquid nitrogen above the place where people, like my son, work. There are lots of regulations and guidance for the safe storage of cryogens. These were all ignored,”.
It is events like this which have led to the demand for effective health and safety management in the lairs of evil villains.