Re: Zero hours contracts : Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:24 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Germany is not here, the culture is very different .

Not really. In fact we have way more in common with Germany than most other European countries.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:32 am  

Big Graeme wrote:

Not really. In fact we have way more in common with Germany than most other European countries.

Apart from management philosophy & practice.

Oh and levels of union membership

Re: Zero hours contracts : Thu Aug 22, 2013 8:17 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

... Fairer society - yet more clap trap - socialism has been proved to be unworkable...

Sal Paradise wrote:

... My view is simply this - you have to allow things to take a certain course, those talented individuals have to encouraged to express themselves to the maximum. Some will earn incredible amounts of money but hopefully that money will filter down. These individuals are the wealth generators, the employers of people, the innovators, essential to any thriving state. There has to be financial justifications for people to want to get on an move up the ladder, these justifications have to be significant enough to drive individuals to want to attain them...
Your idea that all companies should pay sufficient so that no benefits are required is lame, companies would simply employ less staff or increase prices. They have an obligation to the shareholders to deliver a return on the monies invested - capitalism!! why would any investor be bothered if they couldn't get a return - they are not making charitable donations. So why not increase the minimum wage but remove employers NI? Probably because the latter more the adequately covers the former?
How do get a fairer society - the only way is if the financially surplus people are prepared to give to the financially deficit people and there in lies your problem - theories are great until you put the human into them. Why is capitalism the only real game in town? because it is the closest system to the natural instincts of the human. The harder he/she hunts the greater chance of accumulating food. I come back to my very first point you simply do not understand the reality of political theory.

Sal Paradise wrote:

Germany is not here, the culture is very different to compare is like comparing apples to oranges, yes they are fruit but that is as far as meaningful comparison goes. Why not compare Germany to China? it simply cannot be done with any sense of gravitas. What works in one country is not necessarily transferrable to another.

After you have gone to great lengths talking about political theory (not limiting your arguments to the UK) and how things you disagree with CANNOT work and how socialism has been proven NOT to work in other countries (other countries with other cultures, I might point out), I then point at one of the countries where social democracy does work and, in that instance, has provided the strongest economy in continental Europe ... and the best you can come up with is that it's a different culture?
Sorry Sal, but if you are going to use other countries as examples to try to show how the extreme version of something won't work, you cannot then dismiss those employing the more moderate version where it does.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:05 am  

Mintball wrote:

Damn those conversations for not sticking to an absolutely specific subject.

Just losing interest, 'tis all.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Mon Sep 02, 2013 11:47 pm  

I was speaking to a former colleague on Saturday night who informed me that one leading contract research organisation, that performs scientific studies for all the major pharmaceutical companies, is now employing PhD qualified Chemists on zero hour contracts. These people will not be on good money either when they do work. The job market for Chemistry graduates has got worse since I finished University in the early 90s. Graduate salaries for Chemists have not risen massively despite the alleged demand for scientists. I have seen positions advertised for graduate Chemists with salaries that are barely higher than the minimum wage.

My main reason for staying on to do a PhD was the lack of jobs at the time. At least I wasn't burdened with a massive debt after six years of study. Successive governments have encouraged young people to obtain a University Education in order to obtain a career with good prospects. In actual fact all that many have to look forward to is a massive debt hanging over them while they slave away in a low paid job where their qualifications have very little worth or relevance.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Sep 03, 2013 8:37 am  

There is a simple way to circumvent zero hours contracts: introduce an aggregated annual hours contract. That should cover the vast majority of all "real" jobs and take account of any seasonal demands. Employers would have the flexibility of labour and employees would have the safety-net of knowing what they'd be earning each week/month.

It would of course require managing, maybe that's where the UK and US fall short?

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Sep 03, 2013 12:08 pm  

cod'ead wrote: It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

cod'ead wrote: It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Sep 03, 2013 12:47 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

After you have gone to great lengths talking about political theory (not limiting your arguments to the UK) and how things you disagree with CANNOT work and how socialism has been proven NOT to work in other countries (other countries with other cultures, I might point out), I then point at one of the countries where social democracy does work and, in that instance, has provided the strongest economy in continental Europe ... and the best you can come up with is that it's a different culture?
Sorry Sal, but if you are going to use other countries as examples to try to show how the extreme version of something won't work, you cannot then dismiss those employing the more moderate version where it does.

Germany is effectively no different to here the wealth is generated by private companies - it has a different relationship with unions than we do here. Essentially the people making the decisions around wealth generation are the directors of private sector companies i.e. Capitalism or have I got that wrong? are there great swathes of public sector manufacturing, mining, banking and service providers in Germany? Germany is a federal state of course it will have different nuances to here - the fact still remains that wealth generation doesn't originate with the state.

Show me a truly socialist state where the average standard of living even approaches here?

Re: Zero hours contracts : Tue Sep 03, 2013 4:15 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

Germany is effectively no different to here the wealth is generated by private companies - it has a different relationship with unions than we do here...

Agreed.

Sal Paradise wrote:

Essentially the people making the decisions around wealth generation are the directors of private sector companies i.e. Capitalism or have I got that wrong?

Slightly, yes.
Unions and employers work together.
Factories and companies are legally obliged to have works councils.
It's not simply "the management" telling "the workers" that it's my way or the highway.

Sal Paradise wrote:

are there great swathes of public sector manufacturing, mining, banking and service providers in Germany?

Not that I know of.
We weren't talking about nationalisation, we were talking about a fairer society, your response was "Fairer society - more claptrap".

Sal Paradise wrote:

...Germany is a federal state of course it will have different nuances to here..

Yes it is, a federal state is a great system IMHO (the Allies imposed it on Germany after WWII as being a fair system ... but it's not for us, oh no).
But because we are not a federal state shouldn't be a barrier to us being a fairer state.

Sal Paradise wrote:

... - the fact still remains that wealth generation doesn't originate with the state...

I didn't say it did. (I wouldn't say it should either).
I pointed at a country with the sort of benefits that you say won't work in a successful economy.
By the way, the state does have a procurement policy of buying from companies that are judged to be looking good for the national economy ... the TUC here in the UK recommended this and the tories were going to adopt it but I've heard no more about it since.

Sal Paradise wrote:

... Show me a truly socialist state where the average standard of living even approaches here?

I don't know what your definition of "truly socialist" would be, although I suspect you might mean Marxist Communist, miles away from what I'm talking about.

Germany has built a fairer state on social democratic principles, resulting in all the benefits I listed in my earlier posts PLUS a strong economy.
As a social democrat myself, I see the best system as being one that utilises the market and capital but maintains restraint on the excesses of capitalism and ensures that the economy is for the benefit of the people rather than the other way round ... like Germany so far, in fact.

Re: Zero hours contracts : Fri Sep 06, 2013 4:14 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

There is a simple way to circumvent zero hours contracts: introduce an aggregated annual hours contract. That should cover the vast majority of all "real" jobs and take account of any seasonal demands. Employers would have the flexibility of labour and employees would have the safety-net of knowing what they'd be earning each week/month.

It would of course require managing, maybe that's where the UK and US fall short?

I'm hoping, in the not too distant future, to be able to research a piece on how the local economy works in Collioure, where we've been holidaying for a few years. You see the same people - of all ages - doing the same jobs. Yet there must be an off-season' period, so how does it work, both for those individuals and for the wider local economy.

Not least since the wider area used to be the poorest in France, but is shrugging that off quite seriously.

One interesting point though: the local mayor is a member of the socialist party and is locally considered to have done a massive amount to boost the town's tourist appeal - not least by very judicious use of planning rules. Planning rules have kept the chains out and kept building low rise and complimentary to the old village. Collioure rules the roost of the local villages in terms of holidaymakers - not least because it has retained real charm in a way other places have not, yet is growing econonomically in other ways too (increased wine producetion by a local cooperative, of wines that are now getting much greater recognition, for instance).

It would be an interesting case study.