Somebody has to pick your name before the machine will do a thing with it.
Three kinds of company can license a way of working: the people who build machines, the people who fit kit to machines already out working, and a company that owns machines with a job on. They take it for a job, on a machine, for the hours it runs. Before that starts, somebody on the crew has to find your name, pick it, and put their own name against the choice. No default, and no last-used.
Three kinds of company, and nobody licenses it to read it.
The list is short, and everybody on it either builds machines or runs them. It is licensed to be run on a machine, for work, and not for looking at.
The people who build the machine
A maker builds a machine so a licensed way of working can be picked on it and run on it. What they sell is their machine. What comes from you is a way of working one of their customers can ask for by name and pay for by the hour.
The people who fit kit to machines already working
Most of the iron on the ground was built before any of this existed and will be out earning for years yet. A kit company fits what is needed onto a machine already on a job, so the picking and the counting work the same there as on a new one.
The outfit that owns the machines
A contractor, a fleet, whoever owns the iron and has work in front of them. They license a name for the work they have, on the machines they own, for as long as it runs.
What none of the three gets is a copy to keep. It is licensed for a job, on a machine, for the hours it runs, and when the job is done the charge stops with the hours. They cannot pass it on, sell it, or hold on to it once the paper is finished. And if the person behind it says stop, it stops for new work at once, and a job already underway finishes. Nobody at that end can stretch that out, and neither can we.
No default, and no last-used.
This is the part worth being concrete about, because it decides whether your name means anything once the machine is out of the yard.
Picture the machine. Somebody on that crew — the person who answers for it working that shift — goes to the list of what their outfit has licensed. They find the name they want. They pick it. They put their own name against the choice, right there at the machine. Only then will the machine do anything with it.
A machine does not arrive with a name already picked, and it does not carry yesterday's pick into today. Both sound like small conveniences and both are the same hole in the floor. A machine still set to yesterday's choice is running on nobody's say-so this morning, and when somebody asks who chose it there is no name to give. So the choice is made again, every time, by a person standing there who will put their name to it.
There is a second thing that act does, and it matters to your pocket. The same signature that clears the machine to work is the one the count runs from. One row, signed where the work is. The hour a company is charged for and the hour you are owed for come off it, so neither can be moved without moving the other.
It looks like the way a crew already works. Nobody puts a hand in a seat without knowing who is in it. This is that same habit written down: a name chosen, a name against the choice, and somebody who can be asked about it afterwards.
None of that is us reaching into somebody else's yard. The picking is theirs and the clearing is theirs. What is settled here is that a person does it, with a name attached.
It offers. It never decides.
Three steps, in that order, and the order is not negotiable in any agreement we sign.
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01
It proposes What it puts up is a suggestion about how the work in front of that machine could be done, in your way of doing it. It is an offer and nothing more. It carries no authority of its own, and there is no setting anywhere that gives it any.
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02
A person authorizes Somebody on that crew says go, the same as they would with anybody new in a seat. They can say no — not on this ground, not in this weather, not until the bank is laid back — and they can stop it halfway through the shift and give no reason. A person who finds it awkward to say no stops saying it, so saying no costs nothing here.
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03
Safety has the last word The machine's own protection sits over all of it. If the machine says no, the answer is no, and nothing licensed from us can talk it round or switch it off. We do not build machines and we do not fit them out. No part of anybody's case for a machine being safe rests on anything we supply.
So a crew is still a crew. Somebody clears the work, somebody answers for it, and what we license sits underneath both of them and never above either. That order is also why your name never ends up on somebody else's decision: you are not in the seat and you are not the one saying go. Your part is the way of working. Theirs is the job.
Somebody asked for you by name before a machine moved.
Which is the shape a crew already knows.
The hands worth something get asked for by name for the job nobody wants. Somebody who has stood beside the work says: get them on it. This is that same act, on a machine, written down and counted. Nobody is picked off a ranking, because a person goes looking for a name they already have a reason to want.
It is not you being hired out. You are not on that site, you are not on call, and nothing about your own Monday changes. What is licensed is a way of working with your name on it. What comes back to you is the hours it ran.
And if you want to know who has picked your name, how often, and what is owed against it, that comes from Even Steven. They hold your agreement and they hold the count you are paid on. We deal with the companies running the machines; they deal with you. Write to us about your own paper and all we can honestly do is walk you back to their door. Why there are two companies is on the other company; what happens to your way of working before it reaches a machine is on what we do with it.
Even Steven holds your side of this.
Your agreement, your yes, your name, the count and the money are all theirs to answer, in plain words. That is the door with your name on it.