Low productivity arises from employers taking on cheap unskilled labour instead of investing. The ‘growth’ in the economy under Osborne equates to the extra numbers joining the labour force from elsewhere. It never ceases to amaze me how the employer class can persuade so many people that their interests are the same as those of the employees. Consequently we have half-wits decrying eg French workers (check Numbeo for a glimpse of how we compare for costs of living and income etc, ‘efficiency’ for whom?) and banging on about red tape whereas a completely stripped down neo-liberal economy with a pre-1940 sized welfare state will actually reduce efficiency.
Productive economies nurture and invest in their workers and pay them properly. The current government and sadly many on here are looking in the opposite direction, zero hours, minimum wage and so on. Have we forgotten all that Richard Wilkinson ‘Spirit Level’ stuff already about inequality driving inefficiency? Unless ST has a disproportionate number of capitalist class followers, so many views here make me think of turkeys and Christmas. The message really is: help the ‘economy’ by working harder for less. This really is idiot economics.

Have we forgotten all that Richard Wilkinson ‘Spirit Level’ stuff already about inequality driving inefficiency?

Yeah, I would blame Thatcher but that seems to be akin to resorting to Godwins/Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Just to say that (apart from the obvious nonsense) this thread has been both educational and very interesting.

🙂

Remember when Philip Green paid himself a billion pounds bonus, paid to his wife in Monaco, to avoid paying tax. That same year he told the workforce they had to work 2 years longer before they could draw on their (reduced) pensions. These two events are not unrelated.
The CEOs arguing for ‘efficiency’, ‘streamlining’, ‘cutting the red tape’ are precisely the people who mire themselves in guaranteed incomes, guaranteed bonuses even when the firm makes a loss, guaranteed pensions, golden handcuffs etc. Think Sir Fred at RBS. What is the masterstroke is when they persuade their minions to run around arguing that if we all work harder for less money on no guaranteed hours ie greater ‘efficiency’, then we will be better off. No, THEY will be better off and we will be forked. Workers need to fight their corner, no-one is going to do it for them.

Problem is BillMC is there is no unified “The CEO’s” or “The Workers” there are thousands of smaller businesses in the middle ground where the bosses take the risks, put up their money, try and do the best for their workers and the business that provides them with jobs. Places where the boss/owner takes the profit when it’s there and rides out the loss when it’s not working.

The deal needs to work but pitting one against the other in the tribal them and us doesn’t seem to have worked so far but hey keep trying.

Not just funding the monkeys to change jobs at 40?

Easy tiger, I’m one of those monkeys 👿

To be honest, 90% of my career change training has been through the power of Google and a bit of critical thinking.

Economic productivity in this measure is total economic output dvided by manpower input hours, days, wte whatever.

So its as I thought it our genraly mass of low level low paying economy.

@tom-w1987 I work in a high tech sector. Non of the 99 % of the tasks in jobs I have had require the level of eduction I have. Most could easily be achieved with some good training. R and Matlab are not hard just because it has become a buzzword that recruitment consultants are creaming them self over does not mean shit.

I have less experience of Europe but n.America it is very common for people to have trades or similar and earn very good money. Real knowledge comes from doing real things. We do really get over excited by degrees. Even in the UK some of the best engineers I know have HND level eduction. One designs boats for the olimpics the other decommissioning equipment for nuclear plant.

Are you a public sector worker?

From the man who espouses all problems are caused by Zombie maggots and the only cure is with a shotgun or some other weapon he learned about playing video games, for the love of God shut up.

Public sector has recently been a great example of efficiency savings – look at DVLA, huge savings in the cost of processing road tax and driver Licencing through computerisation and online payments etc.

Not so good for those who lose their jobs though

One can only expect that similar will be seen in other areas of the public sector – tax credits paperwork for example.

Should we avoid making something more efficient because we would be laying off public sector workers though?

for the love of God shut up

I gave up reading his posts a while ago.

Or how about in my line of work you make so many cuts that we cant actually do our job and now pick and choose (following set criteria) what we deal with. Public get arsey and complain that what we did regularly 2 years ago we don’t do now. Well who did you vote for I ask?

edward2000 – Member
I bet half the people here dont know what productivity is and dont know how to measure it

Come on then Edward……….dont hold back !

I gave up reading his posts a while ago.

+ 1 The only person I file block

The CEO’s” or “The Workers” there are thousands of smaller businesses in the middle ground where the bosses take the risks, put up their money, try and do the best for their workers and the business that provides them with jobs. Places where the boss/owner takes the profit when it’s there and rides out the loss when it’s not working.

Indeed and we do need to do something to realise that for every tax avoiding rapacious capitalistic scum dog there are decent folk working hard. i dont think this negates his point

The deal needs to work but pitting one against the other in the tribal them and us doesn’t seem to have worked so far but hey keep trying.

I am not sure we have actually tried beyond moaning about it
as this fell some way short of a defence of the status quo and instead just attacked the methods used to defeat it. Are you agreeing with his point or disagreeing?

@tom-w1987 I work in a high tech sector. Non of the 99 % of the tasks in jobs I have had require the level of eduction I have. Most could easily be achieved with some good training. R and Matlab are not hard just because it has become a buzzword that recruitment consultants are creaming them self over does not mean shit.

My point was, is that they aren’t taught at A-level and very few companies are willing to invest resources in teaching youngsters/graduates those programs. If you want to say “well teach them those skills during 16-18 education”, then we may as well go the old Filipino route and skip A-levels all together and do a 3-4 year degree from the age of 16. That didn’t work out for the Philippines.

In my line of work, there is shit that I really need to go and do a specialized masters in to gain the basic skills for the jobs that I want. Stuff that was either quickly covered or all out skipped entirely during my degree. If I was going more down the laboratory based route, I’d be looking at doing a masters in Germany simply because of the sheer amount of technical skills and lab time that are taught on some of their biotech masters.

Right now though I’m trying to decide between a Statistics masters or Warwick to do Complexity Science.

Even in the UK some of the best engineers I know have HND level eduction.

Engineer pay in the uk is generally regarded as shit isn’t it, outside of chemistry engineering anyway? It’s funny that in the States, where engineer pay is excellent that most of them go to college/university.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20034164

Within the group of countries in the wider European education area, it says that apart from England and Wales, the only other countries to have so few home students staying on for postgraduate are Andorra and Kazakhstan

Tom your perspective seems to come from perhaps a limited experience, nobody is saying you don’t need that just not everyone does. Engineering covers a lot these days and I’ve see loads of good HND/apprentice designers working alongside Mech Eng grads. Hard to tell the difference a lot of the time.

My point was, is that they aren’t taught at A-level and very few companies are willing to invest resources in teaching youngsters/graduates those programs.

and that is the crux of it, business needs to invest in it’s staff in the right way. Is it better to train the guy there to do one extra task/programme or to replace him with a less experienced grad with the skill?

Every new programme I used I was trained by work at some stage (or self taught), I’m off to Utah for a week later in the year to do more. A chunk of my income also comes from teaching specific software to people in business. Those with a masters had they learnt it at Uni would be 3-4 years behind in my field by the time they got their first job.

If I needed some matlab/r work doing I’d probably just hire a contractor for the specifics much quicker and probably a very good quality output.

If you think pay in the US is better go for it, probably sell the bikes first as you wont get much time off and all that better pay will probably cover your health insurance.

I’m not saying no post school eduction but that hndlevel and advanced aprentaships would be enough if well targeted.
P.s I’d do the stats if I were youbut make sure you do a module in probability theory. Again how much of your masters you use once in industry will be debatable but it might get you a job!

If you think pay in the US is better go for it, probably sell the bikes first as you wont get much time off and all that better pay will probably cover your health insurance.

The USA’s waorkforce is more productive than us.

So although their culture is to work hard (Texan suppliers fail Euro company supplier audits designed to stop exploitative labour practices in Asia!) they don’t need to. Collectively they could work less and still have the same standard of living that we do.

(Their healthcare system is the most expensive in the world though)