1 Trade unions and the modern work place (James Adonis in Sydney Morning Herald) Jeez, you’d have to really hate being a union rep right about now. Seemingly everywhere you look there are examples of how the union movement’s relevance is plummeting, while its questionable behaviour is ramping up. In many ways, unions have morphed into the businesses they so despise. What they’ve spent so long opposing – the ruthless and greedy nature of the big corporates – they are now themselves guilty of, which is perhaps a reason why less than one in five people trust them to be their representatives at work.
Unions
are unequivocally businesses – some are Big Businesses – selling themselves to
potential consumers (industry workers) in return for a service (potential
support). They engage in product development and marketing just like any other
business, earning substantial revenue while paying their staff generously, much
more than the workers they represent. They are, through and through, as much a
product of capitalism as the organisations they oppose.
What
makes this downfall tragic is that unions have historically been hugely
successful at making this country great, significantly lifting the standard of
workplaces across Australia. But that standard is now maintained by solid
industrial relations legislation and intense competition for quality workers,
the combination of which advantages employees irrespective of union
involvement. Just because unions were useful in the past doesn’t mean they’re
still useful today.
If
anything, their existence and characteristic obstinacy are a hindrance to the
workers they’re supposed to protect. When unemployment is increasing and the
economy is stagnating, it’s essential for labour costs to be relaxed so that
employers have an incentive to hire more people. When the situation reverses
and the economy is booming, then those costs can rise once again.
Unfortunately, trade unions seem to prefer higher wages even if it means fewer
people are receiving them.
The
economy aside, the irrelevance of trade unions is most evident inside
organisations where poor-performing employees are frequently defended by union
representatives seeking any opportunity for a contest against a leader. What
unions don’t understand is that the poor performer’s colleagues are just as
pissed off as the supervisor. Sick of being paid a similar salary for doing
twice as much work, they too want the slacker gone.
2 UK living standard keeps falling (Katie Allen in The Guardian) Living standards in Britain have suffered their most prolonged decline for at least half a century, according to official data that has been seized on by Labour as further proof of a cost of living crisis under the coalition. A report from the Office for National Statistics found that real wages have been falling consistently since 2010, the longest such period since at least 1964, when comparable records began. Statisticians put the deterioration down to several factors such as a change in the number of hours people work as well as a fall in productivity.
The ONS also highlighted different inflation rates between what is produced in Britain and what is consumed, helping to explain the divergence between productivity and real wage growth since 2010. In other words, the rate of inflation experienced by workers spending their pay was not the same as the rate of inflation in the goods their employers were selling.
The effect from hours worked in the labour market was to put downward pressure on real wage growth during the downturn but upward pressure more recently. Real wages may also have been affected by rises in non-wage costs of hiring, such as national insurance contributions, which can prompt firms to tweak workers' pay to manage their overall costs.
Worryingly for an economy still struggling to rebalance towards more manufacturing and away from reliance on consumer demand, there was some effect on real wages from the changing composition of Britain's workforce. That came particularly from the shift from higher paid workers in the manufacturing sector towards lower paid services industries.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/31/official-longest-fall-wages-living-standards-50-years
3 India growth slowest in decade (Khaleej Times) Indian government on Friday sharply revised down economic growth for financial year 2012-13 to 4.5 per cent from its earlier estimate of five per cent due to lower farm and manufacturing output. According to the first revised estimates of national income for 2012-13 released by the Central Statistics Office, India’s gross domestic product expanded by 4.5 per cent. This is the slowest pace of economic expansion in a decade. The country’s GDP expanded by 6.7 per cent in 2011-12.
The CSO data also showed lower than estimated growth numbers for exports, capital investment and consumption sectors, suggesting deeper underlying weaknesses in Asia’s third-largest economy, which grew at more than nine per cent before the 2008 global financial crisis.
http://khaleejtimes.com/biz/inside.asp?section=internationbusiness&xfile=/data/internationbusiness/2014/February/internationbusiness_February9.xml
4 Popular India cars fail crash test (BBC) Five of
India's most popular small cars have failed crash tests conducted by a UK-based
car safety watchdog. The tests by Global NCAP showed that if involved in a
crash, fatalities or serious injuries could result. Among the cars tested was
India's talismanic Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, as well as models made
in India by Ford, Volkswagen and Hyundai. The cars were apparently stripped of
safety features to make them cheaper for Indian buyers, correspondents say.
The five
models accounted for 20% of all sales in the country last year. Estimates say
that about 80% of the cars sold in India have price tags of under $8,000. "It's
worrying to see levels of safety that are 20 years behind the five-star
standards now common in Europe and North America," said the head of NCAP
Global, Max Mosley, the former chief of international motorsport.
The car
safety watchdog put five models through crash tests, including the
Suzuki-Maruti Alto 800, the Tata Nano, Ford Figo, Hyundai i10 and Volkswagen
Polo. None of these entry-level cars sold in India is fitted with airbags. They
also lack the safety standards that the same models have when sold in North
America and Europe, according to the watchdog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25974754
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