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US CEO Says French Workers Have Three-Hour Work Day
First time accepted submitter M3.14 writes "In a letter addressed to French Industrial Renewal Minister, Maurice Taylor, chief executive of Titan, writes (French article with English letter) that it would be stupid to buy any factory in France since workers don't really work full time. He'd rather buy cheap factories in India and China instead and import tires back to France. He writes, 'They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"
I respect a politician who speaks the truth. I don't understand why this is news.
Another communist country down the toilet!
Thanks to the erosion of unions, as well as a proliferation of anti-worker laws Americans don't have to worry about personal time or their health. In fact, we can't really worry about either.
It's pathetically easy to get American's to forsake their vacations, their personal time, their families in order to pad a sleazy company's bottom line.
Well... they can get another job you say... Well the union busting plantation owners made sure that the vast majority of America's jobs abuse their employees, so you can only choose among bad options.
There are exceptions to every rule, but Americans have been voting against our own interest for at least the last 30.
Don't pat yourself on the back for opening your country up to near slave labor practices.
Just to give a litttle perspective to all of you Objectivists out there, Maurice is a naughty boy http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr19107.htm, and I'd take anything he says with either a pound of salt or 50k slipped into your brief case.
But hey, free markets right?
So we have demonstrably false stereotypes of the French being played up by a conservative who prefers labor practices which exploit workers. As a fellow American, may I just say not everyone here would mock a country for having respect for the well being and rights of its citizens, even those who have a job.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
With automation and robotics, we have a time rapidly approaching when there won't be enough work to go around if we insist on full time. There isn't enough work to go around now with some people working 60 hours a week.
Listen- capital thinks they create jobs. But Henry Ford knew... it is people with money to BUY things that creates jobs. If you don't hire anyone in France at 1st world wages, pretty soon you won't be able to sell your expensive tires there. You'll have to sell them at the prices you sell them in China.
For comparison- movies that cost $20 in the US cost $2.50 in China. A visit to the doctor for $50 in the US runs $3 in China. Heart surgery that costs $100k in the US runs about $16k in China.
So if you don't hire french workers, pretty soon you'll have to sell your $20 tires with $2 profit for $3 dollars with $.30 cents profit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If its true, I have only been to a remote colony in the Caribbean, but what pissed me off was the statement afterwords of "pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs" (speaking of china and india)
well fuck the hell out of you too, I just bought new tires, and they were not Michelin, I felt they were average tires for premium price ... but buddy I will never ever even acknowledge your brands even exist any more, and if anyone asks I will be sure to share your feelings.
I'm down with an hour for breaks and an hour for lunch, but i don't understand the "talk" for 3 hours. What exactly do they "talk" about for 3 hours?
Be seeing you...
I want to move there today! (And the wine there is better, too).
Funny that the summary doesn't include his initial statement to the French industry official that approached him: "How stupid do you think we are?"
In a word: Very.
CNN observes that Taylor is not only a relic of the 80s' leveraged buyout "corporate raiders" era, he's a hypocrite as well for wanting to make tires in China:
"The U.S. government is not much better than the French. Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does," said Taylor.
All of this is beside the point however. US workers have less vacation/break time than anyone else on the planet, in a time where it is increasingly recognized that giving more breaks to workers results in more productivity. The real stupidity comes from failing to notice how well the rest of the world can keep pace with the much-vaunted "American productivity" while maintaining a vastly better quality of life.
Fraternité, Liberté, Société
Foreign concepts to the modern 'American Mind.' :)
Oh Yes.
Come down to India and China, where we have no goddamn lives any more. We work more than 12 hours a day on menial tasks at odd times. Forget work-life balance, because we really have no lives. And we work because that's how poor we are, with little choice in life and no government looking out for us. Train us. Use us. Abuse us. Talk to us in racial undertones. Marvel at our ability to take crap for little money.
Get away with your profits.
Welcome to the bright world of outsourcing.
I'm sure he thinks that US workers are also lazy. He probably thinks we talk for three and work for five.
Everyone votes as if they are the fabulously wealthy fat cat, that they dream about being. The reality is that they are a slave, and by accepting the "winner takes all" mindset, they are merely further enriching the tiny population of existing winners. Much better to accept that the typical American is a wage slave, and that the country should be run for the benefit of the wave slave majority (gasp, socialism!)
As opposed to the Chief Executive who talks maybe 6 hours a day and eats lunch for 2 hours.
I'm a newly appointed director working under a CEO and as far as I can they generally only give an ever increasing distribution of work.
Meanwhile they try to ever decrease thier workload.
What exactly is the difference between buying a factory in France and/or one in US?
Seems to me it's still stupid to buy a factory in US. Reductio ad absurdum, assume it wouldn't be stupid, then why the choice to buy a factory in India instead of US?
Wouldn't this make CEO's "high moral ground" position leaning towards hypocritical? (as in: "I'm going to buy a factory in India anyway, you know it makes business sense. But I'll use the opportunity to bash a bit these Frenchmen")
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I find it hilarious to imaging an entire factory of french workers just screaming at each other for 3 hours in that horrible language
Yes, but there are twice as many of us to feed!!!!! All the productivity gain is for naught if the population keeps going up.
Talk about how much they get done.
If I had a bunch of workers that worked for an hour, but got the same amount of work done as another bunch of workers would in ten hours (assume that the groups are the exact same size), I would happily pay that first bunch a full day's pay of $X rather than pay the second bunch a full day's pay of $X. Sure, they're working fewer hours ... but they're getting more done, so I'd be getting better value for money.
You get what you measure; if you're measuring the hours worked, you might not be getting the productivity for those hours that you hope for.
Compare programmers. You'll get better results if they work their 40 hours a week and relax out of hours than if you drive them to work 60 or 80 hours in crunch mode for months on end.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday. While an increased GDP inflates the bank balances of the rich more than it does the middle-or-lower classes, there are benefits in having a strong economy for us too; most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
France law sets full time workers at 35 hours per weeks. This is much more than 3 hours of work. One could argue that 35 hours is not the highest working time in the world, but french worker GDP per working hour is quite high, which make France still relevant.
The Grizz rant is just a point against globalization. It demonstrates very well that it can be used to lower worker conditions as much as wanted.
The main problem is that most unions are about nepotism and self-perpetuation nowadays.
They don't really provide all that much protection to workers anymore.
And they don't provide all that much help in collective bargaining with owners anymore.
They have their nice, rigid little idea of the way things "ought to be" with a bunch of leeches falling between the cracks while other, honest, hardworking members get shafted. Why?
The three tier structure in most unions.
The union leaders, "Old Boys' Club" (who are in good with the former), and "Those other peons" (who aren't in good with the former). Each tier being an order or two of magnitude larger than the one preceding it.
So you get guys whose job it is to stuff their thumbs up their asses all day and do nothing, getting paid huge sums compared to the union average.
Then you get the guys who know them who get the "supervisor" positions. Again, full time, much higher wages than the average.
Then you get pretty much everyone else. The poor schlub who's just there to do his job as best he can. Who doesn't happen to fit in to the social group. The guys who're constantly off work because "there's no work". Or they're being replaced by someone with more clout.
Fuck unions.
At one point, they were a good and useful thing in this country.
Nowadays, they're just an extra hand out looking for more money who provide no service.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yeah, but for the time being, they still have a market to sell goods produced by labor paid at third world rates for first world prices. Sure, it'll dry up eventually, and then they're back to the same profit margins that they'd have if they both made and sold it there - but they'll make a hefty profit until then. And what of it if the new market is China? It doesn't really matter if it's made for $2 and sold for $3, or made for $20 and sold for $30 - especially when the purchasing power of that $2 is that much higher (which it will be once the wages are depressed lower in first world countries due to outsourcing).
Anyway, much as I don't trust the notion that free market solves all problems, this isn't a failure of the free market. The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them. Of course this situation will be abused in a capitalist economy, so long as it's legal and it makes money! The only two workarounds are to either let the labor flow freely as well (i.e. open immigration), or impose tariffs on foreign goods to counterbalance the cost of living differences. Both approaches come with strings attached, but the former is straight out nonviable for many reasons (the amount of migration that'll have to happen to even the market is far beyond what first world countries can manage to handle), while the latter would actually work. Ironically, it's being argued against on "free market" basis, even though all it'd do is make the market more free (or at least more balanced!).
The French still managed to gift the US a statue of liberty if all they do all day is drink wine and speculate about the impending Communist world revolution.
Sorry, which part of what he's saying isn't true?
Beyond the lack of any kind of work ethic, it's amazing that anyone decides to open a business in France given that: it's impossible to fire anyone ever, there are yearly scheduled "strikes" which "coincidentally" happen during the nicest weather, there are crushing taxes, and you must comply with esoteric and expensive language rules.
Of course, they do have good food and wine, so that's something.
In any given work week I only do 15 minutes of real work
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
Boss had a trip to meet with an industry leader in Montreal. He was amazed how little people worked up there.
US Productivity has been rising since the beginning.
Since 1970 it's more than doubled.
Productivity in the US is so high that if it were equally distributed, everyone could get $38,000 worth of stuff - every man, woman, and child in the country - and then do it again next year. And the year after that.
Our productivity is so high we're beginning to run out productive job slots. To take an example, the number of people needed in agriculture is vanishingly small compared to the number needed a hundred years ago. Machines now do most of the work.
We read about this all the time: Google's self-driving car will put professional drivers out of work, Watson will put many doctors out of work... the list goes on.
Our culture requires people to work in order to be valid members. We look down upon people receiving welfare, government aid, social security, and so on. The talk around Washington is that people on medicare are moochers! Let's get rid of it and make them pay their own way!
We've doubled productivity, yet we haven't reduced the time we're required to work - in our "race to the bottom" people are working longer hours for ever lowering wages. Sometimes people have to work 3 jobs just to get by.
The solution is to reduce the weekly workload of all employees. If we went to a 30-hour work week with overlapping days, we could eliminate unemployment and pay everyone a living wage. As productivity rises, we could cut the working hours even more.
If we were more like the French, people would have more leisure time to enjoy the fruits of a highly productive society.
Don't knock the French - they've got this "working for a living" thing figured out.
As a guy who worked for a company with its headquarters in France, I'm siding with the CEO on this.
I keep hearing this "not enough work" nonsense. Look around. Don't you see many things that need to be done but aren't? There's plenty of work. I see enough for me to do in three lifetimes. The problem isn't a lack of work. The problem is that the very people who keep touting the power of the market have created a market where most work will never be done. It is their job to find ways to create a profit from work, and they're not doing it.
"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three."
Sounds like most of the goddamned 'management' in the US. Except the french work MORE, it seems.
#1 If your lazy move someplace with socialist policies
#2 I support socialism
#3 I head a small company that I started
#4 I work a lot of hours
#5 I make good money
#6 My employees make shit, my last two employee I started at $8, one wasn't worth $8 an hour, the other was, and was/is worth $60,000 a year easy, not that the business can afford that yet
#7 Don't work for someone else at shit pay
#8 Work a crap load of hours and stop being lazy, work your ass off for yourself, and start a family when you can afford it
#9 DON'T bitch about immigration unless your going to accept legalizing more of it and undoing the laws which push wages down!!!!! Illegal labor is good for the employer and bad for the legal workers because it pushes wages down. Laws which let in more legal worker and then make it difficult to switch jobs push wages down!!!!
#10 You still need to work your ass off if you plan to compete
#11 If your going to get educated and pay through the roof do so only if that academic path leads to jobs in ample supply with insufficient workers at high wages
#12 If you get a degree in English, History, or some other area you should expect to live on welfare, your a useless bum to society and not intelligent enough to be useful to anyone. You'd save employers and everybody else's time/effort/money by NOT WORKING!
I rest my case.
Also, 'doing more' isn't always good.
If you government were to pay people to dig ditches all day to eliminate unemployment, it would lead to soil erosion, dust pollution, on the job injuries, digs into fiber optic cables, etc. etc.
Sometimes, it's best to do nothing.
Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
With automation and robotics, we have a time rapidly approaching when there won't be enough work to go around if we insist on full time. There isn't enough work to go around now with some people working 60 hours a week.
Listen- capital thinks they create jobs. But Henry Ford knew... it is people with money to BUY things that creates jobs. If you don't hire anyone in France at 1st world wages, pretty soon you won't be able to sell your expensive tires there. You'll have to sell them at the prices you sell them in China.
For comparison- movies that cost $20 in the US cost $2.50 in China. A visit to the doctor for $50 in the US runs $3 in China. Heart surgery that costs $100k in the US runs about $16k in China.
So if you don't hire french workers, pretty soon you'll have to sell your $20 tires with $2 profit for $3 dollars with $.30 cents profit.
China prices are a bit off but your point is well made: Movies $5 minimum, Doctor Visit: $0.70 (tests are more), surgery sounds about right for a really top-notch hospital. Food is the big difference, it's a fraction of the price compared to the US.
the CEO forgot one thing :
workers work only 3 hours a day because they don't have work
No investment in this factory since 10 years !
don't forgot : Michelin manufactures tyres in France (and abroad) and wins a lot of money.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_myth_of_american_productiv034576.php
i'm an IT guy
in our company, we are 2 people to support 130 users, so the ratio is 1 for 65 users
in the USA sister company, the ratio is 1 for 40 users
we are less, we do more
no productivity in France ?
There are good products that come from France, whether it is food, clothing, houseware, colognes, and the like. France is usually associated with luxury products. What is important is the net result. What are they making? What is the quality of the product? If it takes them three hours to make/build a top quality item, so be it. As a consumer, I care about the end result. Products made where labour is exploited tends to be shoddy. There has to be care and pride infused into a product. Watchmakers do not spend many hours a day working, but they produce amazing results. There is such a thing as 'work hard', but also 'work smart'. I feel awful for workers in Mexico who break their back for a lousy 60 dollars per week, and their living expenses are not that different from the USA. I prefer products not made by slaves. If I was setting up a factory, I want to make sure my products are made with care, love, and pride.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
And, if my understanding is correct, that's all they need to work because their productivity is just that high.
Maybe they don't treat their employees like expendable shit and have less anxiety about career stability.
I've been in jobs where the actual work could be phoned in. You could get caught up by say 10:30AM. The rest of the day you bullshitted with co-workers, had lunch, took a walk, did whatever.
In a lot of U.S. business it's nothing but busy work and seat time.
I would happily live in a moderately sized cupboard and forgo all international travel if it meant I could work for just two days a week.
Even if open immigration was permitted everywhere, there would still be practical issues maintaining segregation of working populations. Language and cultural barriers.
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them.
Don't forget the effort that goes into blocking the resulting products from crossing international borders! Even customers cannot always shop cross-country
Things like DVD region encoding or textbook licensing come to mind.
Well, it's true.
As a EU citizen (Belgian) I do agree with his views. Other countries in Europe (incl Belgium) have the same problem although not as profound as in France.
like the article already states:
"Bernard Accoyer, an opposition politician, said that while Mr Taylor's assessment amounted to a "mocking caricature", it was "not completely unfounded"
Yeah..and they get more done than any of your 3rd world slaves do in 10 hours. Of course 3 hours is way more than any CEO I've ever know actually works.
What a trite comment.
If all one needs is to put in that last brick, then why don't you do it?
Perhaps putting in that last brick has a lot of value, and that you're trying to excuse a taker's mentality by claiming that nobody is responsible for their success, that it is society's success.
So what does that get you?
You aren't owed anything just because you take up space and breath. The world doesn't work like that.
Spend less time posting on slashdot and more time taking remedial economics classes.
'"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'"
According to the French news, because of financial issues the factory is producing only 10% of what it did 1 year ago, and the production lines run for less than 3 hours per day - no wonder the workers are only working 3 hours!
The movies have gone up fast. I read multiple articles saying they were $2.50 per dvd as recently as spring 2011.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Also (at least in the U.S.) I'm not free to buy many products in other countries and bring them back. It's like I pay a 1000% tax because I live in america.
Not everything is marked up this much. TV type items seem to only be 100%.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Peter Gibbons: "I get in around 9:30 and usually zone out for an hour in front of my computer, but it looks like I'm working. I then zone out for another hour after lunch too. In fact, in a given day, I'd say I do fifteen minutes, of real, actual work."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
besides, producing tires consists of laying layers of rubber on a form, and send the form into a mold that takes multiple hours to cure. once all molds are filled. there's not much you can do, besides waiting for the curing process to finish...
...as compared to US Government workers, they're getting TRIPLE the productivity!
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same
This is truly a serious problem. As a result we have people risking their lives in dangerous immigration attempts across borders.
impose tariffs on foreign goods to counterbalance the cost of living differences.
This however, has never worked very well in practice (I can't think of any case where it's worked well, maybe you know of one).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is somewhat true. I lived on half of what I made and bought a $80k house (now $155k with inflation) and was able to retire at 51. The last three years were brutal tho. 70-80 hour weeks or be fired.
If all we did was say you can't exempt employees who do not directly supervise at least three other employees, we'd probably drop 1% off of unemployment right there.
Fortunately... 12 million net extra boomers ( 24 million total) were born 1945-1953 and they are going to retire 2013 to 2020.
And actually a lot already retired in 2010 and 2011. Between 2001 and 2009 social security went up by 5 million people from about 28mil to 33 mil. In 2010 and 2011 social security went up by 5 million people from 33 mil to 38 mil.
It looks like half of people stop working by 60. Only 15% of men and under 10% of women keep working past 65 currently.. maybe they would keep working until 67 but companies are massively discriminating on age and abusing h1b's. In any case, most of that 10% and 15% working are in positio8s with low physical stress and high education requirements.
Year Births Retirement Deaths Immigration Using SS Y2Y Change SS VS Births
1935 2,155,105 2000 2,403,000 900,000 28,498,945 724,268 1,430,837
1936 2,144,790 2001 2,416,000 1,000,000 28,836,774 337,829 1,806,961
1937 2,203,300 2002 2,443,000 1,000,000 29,190,137 353,363 1,849,937
1938 2,266,900 2003 2,448,000 600,000 29,531,611 341,474 1,925,426
1939 2,265,598 2004 2,397,615 800,000 29,952,465 420,854 1,844,744
1940 2,229,100 2005 2,448,017 900,000 30,460,836 508,371 1,720,729
1941 2,328,000 2006 2,426,264 1,000,000 30,976,143 515,307 1,812,693
1942 2,577,300 2007 2,423,712 1,100,000 31,527,728 551,585 2,025,715
1943 2,664,300 Retire ~66
1944 2,500,500 2008 2,471,984 Pending 32,273,651 745,923 1,754,577
1945 2,421,200 2009 2,437,163 Pending 33,514,013 1,240,362 1,180,838
1946 2,900,900 2010 2,468,435 Pending 36,067,000 2,552,987 347,913
1947 3,229,500 2011 2,468,435 Pending 38,486,000 2,419,000 810,500
1948 3,021,700 2012 Pending Pending Pending Pending
Notably.. France had an even BIGGER baby boom than the U.S. which lasted until 1975.
And notably China also has a massive "worker age" crunch coming up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Idiot believes shit about another country. Hold the presses!
And they can still afford to be a first world country? And you're saying this is a BAD thing?
A robotic dumbfuck brainwashed that "productivity" is exclusive of consumption.
it's dumbfucks like him that caused the previous Great Depression,
by constantly harping on "more stuff" while driving down wages so
nobody could actually afford anything.
This however, has never worked very well in practice (I can't think of any case where it's worked well, maybe you know of one).
I can't think of any case where it was tried in circumstances that are similar to what is going on today. And I'm not saying that it's not without its downsides - only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
If the workers don't make enough to buy his tires it matters not how much labor they perform. Eventually manufacturers will learn the hard fact that people can't buy what they can't afford.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If you read the letter to the end (yes I know...), after the tirade against the French workers, the main subject is subsidizing and unfair competition from the Chinese.
The guy complains against the US government too, and says he'll end up producing only from China and India.
So the French may not be working enough, but the Americans can break their backs all they want, the tires are still coming from China.
This is the important aspect, and it is one which is common to western workers, and more interesting than French- or US-bashing.
I've worked all over the world. I won't go so far as to say this company is emblematic of all French companies but nor do I doubt the CEO's claims (even though I think he's a douchebag).
The fact is people have different expectations about work and I do find these expectations are influenced regionally. In China, for example, it's expected for sales folk to return their calls within 24 hrs. They will pick up in meetings (not considered rude) and I can usually get a hold of them Mon-Sat. In France, I've found employees consider time off exactly that. Can't reach them off-hours, can't reach them when they are on leave, and they are going to take the leave they're allotted.
Even within countries, there are huge differences. SF Bay Area engineering culture is way different from the East Coast. I don't know any of my coworkers that had fully utilized their all of their 3 weeks PTO during the year. Nothing is ever said but people that do that won't advance.
The problem is it's a global economy and a lot of these practices make companies less competitive. I think it's inevitable that they catch up to them. At the same time, you can't keep pushing workers forever.
It just seems to me the problem isn't so much unions but the fact that they are limited in scope. A company may or may not have global options for production/sourcing/labor. Their competition, however, is most probably global. Unions are national at best. That's why the agreements made are so skewed now. Ideally, you'd reach a good agreement by balancing a global market with a global labor source/supply chain. We can't do that, however. And it sucks.
only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Headline: CEO says French workers have a 3 hour day.
Article: CEO says that French workers have a 7 hour day but loaf a lot.
In this case it's not just Slashdot that's to blame for the misleading headline, but come on. What he actually said may be insulting to the French, but is not inherently ridiculous. What the headline claims he said is ridiculous. Sensationalism.
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
actually if you would take into account that they only work 3 hours per 7 marked down.. then france is in top of the list!
which gets us to the fact that a lot of jobs are actually mostly downtime, waiting for input to act on.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
And the really funny part is that the USA ranks behind those "librul" pot smoking socialist hippies in the Netherlands.
They told me that's the French way!
Did they also shrug and say "boff"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd like to know where in the USA you found a visit to the doctor for $50.
Well, yeah. But, they only work 3 hours a day. Thats cheating.
Texas.
You can also get a chiro adjustment for $29 and Dentist cleaning + Xrays for $69.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And in the table right below the one you referred to, France is four places above the USA.
It actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people in the Netherlands work part-time, often 3 or 4 days a week. Working less hours generally means that the hours you do work are more productive. So a workforce that works less hours per person will usually have a higher per-hour productivity.
The french minister sent an answer to Maurice Taylor (who is known to be a troll btw). I couldn't find an english translation but it's a well written answer. (sorry, only pdf's and jpg available at this time)
answer page 1
answer page 2
About the 3h/day of talking, the factory was in a transition period where they temporarily switched their production line from tires for car to tires for truck, and the production line for car tires wasn't fully operational anymore. Taylor would have sent the workers home without payment, but the french union refused. That's their difference.
Of course french workers are not allowed to chat for 3h/day, anyone with a sane mind and who have worked in real life understands this.
most people I know are living "better" (bigger house, more expensive car, more travel, more disposable income) than their parents were at the same age - and frequently with lower debt.
How many of these people are in the same socio-economic class as their parents ?
I struggle to believe someone who is, say, a secretary today is better off than someone in the same secretarial job would have been 30-50 years ago.
OTOH, if your parents were secretaries and/or labourers and you're a degree-qualified professional, then you'd bloody well want to be better off than they were.
Everywhere? Right now? You think there aren't tariffs and duties? Eh? Or are you arguing they don't work? I'm all in favor of tariffs and duties to keep everything from floating to china.
By quite a margin too
Oh, three hours work, sounds great! And free healthcare and retirement, OMG! What am I doing still here?
They are tired.
A nice idea would be to try this out in the US, perhaps at first for a single state or a few states to see how we get on. If it's a success, then other states can join in too. We work to live, not the other way around after all - the goal should be to increase free time.
As I said in an earlier post months ago, tests on such fractions of the US can create a kind of evolution where we can see what works and what doesn't. The fitness function would be the average happiness of the nation, and/or the smallest number of deaths, or some other metric. Similar tests can be done for say, car wing mirrors which 'curve' round (to remove the blind spot), or for different ppms for fluoride/chlorine/ozone in water.
Only by trying out different things at the same time, can we evolve towards what's best in the end. (Lead almost certainly caused increased violence, and the best evidence came about because we could see the effects on different states at the same time).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
My ACM coach used to say "the computer is always waiting for input" regarding sharing the terminal at contests. I guess it's like that.
...'The American worker is the most productive in the world!"
Of course, if they really meant that they'd leave the jobs here... and they don't.
But what does that mean? "Most productive?" That's measured from the standpoint of the company. Not from the standpoint of the worker.
For the worker, "most productive" means your work effort gains you more than for others. For the company "most productive" means that your work effort gains THEM more than others.
"Most productive" measured from the company standpoint means you do more work for less pay.
"Most productive" means "most overworked, most underpaid."
(which I actually doubt, seeing as China still uses slave labor and political prisoner labor.)
This space available.
Oh, the humanity! Three whole hours? That lives remarkable little time for slacking and reading slashdot.
By quite a margin too
Check out the margain for Norway, they don't smoke much as much pot as the Dutch but they are "socialist", "librul" and Aquavit drinkers. There must be something in the Aquavit over there or perhaps the Norwegians have found a way to stay on the the Ballmer Peak for extended periods of time?
Looks like this CEO just admitted to the world he's poorly informed, prone to making important decisions on shockingly little research, and somewhat ignorant to boot.
This is his problem, not ours.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Last year, my team lead got the other five of us together and told us that he didn't want to see us in the office before 7am or after 6pm. One of his pieces of supporting evidence was a study that found that "knowledge workers" can only really run our brains at full speed for about three hours in a given day, after which productivity drops precipitously. Of course, we routinely put in 14-hour shifts when we're on-site... so I guess we're not thinking very hard for 11 of those 14 hours, or something.
(This team lead is the best "boss" I've ever had. Doesn't want me to work excessive hours, doesn't want to even see me in the office if I have comp time, didn't want to give me VPN access because then I'd check my mail from home without getting paid to read it...)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
After communism fell in 1989-90, Hungary was released from being a soviet-bloc satellite state. The japanese centered Suzuki car company quickly came here and had a green-field factory built in the western part of the country. The first batch of hungarian workers they hired were sent over to Japan for 5 weeks to learn what mass-production car manufacturing is about. (Hungary was not allowed to produce any personal use cars during the communist era, only buses, as mandated by the russian-ruled COMECON organization. No kidding!)
The hungarians were amazed at how hard the japanese line workers toiled for 9 hours day after day and begged the interpreter to explain what they saw. She said the japanese adults generally dedicate 3 hours of daily work for the preservation of traditional Shinto faith and morals, another 3 hours for the sake of the revered Emperor and 3 hours for the well-being of their own families.
The hungarians considered this and replied: "We had no monarch since 1918, religion is a private matter in our country, so let some 3 hours of hard work suffice for us!"
Amazingly, the Suzuki company decided to stay in Hungary even after hearing this and they still countinue to build cars in the above mentioned Esztergom factory. Which suggest there is no hopeless race, tribe or nation on the face of Earth, when it comes to work ethics (excepting probably the gipsy/roma).
It's easy to have higher levels of efficiency when your country's compact and next to plenty of export markets. The USA is huge, sprawled and relatively isolated.
I work in an open plan office
I'm lucky if I get 45 minutes productive work done each day
<Life of Brian>Sometimes I hang awake at night dreaming of being allowed to work 3 hours a day.</Life of Brian>
Talk to an Australian, they'll set you right about that preconception.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article38581.html
Per capita GDP ranks the US at 8 and France at 23 (World Bank figures).
Sounds big but in actual monetary terms that's (International Dollars) US 48,112 vs. France 35,246. That is the US is producing 1.36x wealth per capita.
Now that's obviously 'more'. But if the French are only working 3 hours a day and the Americans are working 9 hours a day the latter are not being very productive while doing it.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Some of the employees in that factory are indeed working effectively 3 hours. But they're on the job for the full eight hours of their shift.
Why is that? Goodyear, the current owner of the fab, has lowered the amount of tires that they have to produce per day.
And why is that? Because they want to close that factory. They've been trying for 6 years now, but the union has shown the management's shenanigans time and time again.
When I saw that letter, the first word that came to mind was: bullshit. How can a guy like this be the CEO of a corporation?
Unfair? The world isn't fair.
They leave? Their banks and homes and income remain. Since they aren't here, take it. Unfair? The world isn't fair.
Having worked in all of Portugal, The Netherlands and the UK, I can tell you that the Dutch secret juice is:
- Plan before you start, rather than shoot-from-the-hip decision-making
- No overwork. None, at all. Working 8h/day and not a minute more is vastly more productive in overall simply because people are not tired and so make far fewer mistakes (and in white collar professions mistakes are far more costly to fix that whatever extra "work" you gain from regular overtime).
Interestingly, when I moved to the UK I went to work as a freelancer in one of the most competivive environments with the craziest amounts of overtime (investment banking) and refused to do regular overtime. The end result: I overproduced all of my colleagues (and regularly delivered the needed solutions on time, a rare feat in that industry) and so always got my contracts renewed.
I don't know which French companies only work three hour days. If that is true, it is obviously not acceptable.
So, what they need is a system like in at least some US companies where productivity is measured in hours spent work. So people sit at work for 12+ hours per day while doing maybe 3-4 hours of actual work. But this makes the US productivity figures look good for people like Alan Greenspan who likes to measure productivity in hours spent at work (from his book, not my opinion)! Unbelievable.
My parents were teachers (University educated). I have somewhere in the vicinity of 10 friends who are teachers, and all of them have a higher effective income than my parents did when I was growing up. I've got about the same education as my Dad, but in a different field (web development), and I'm earning now what he did when he retired.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I'm an European, and I have worked in France. It was an office job, so that's not the same but I can share my experience.
Yes, we talked a lot of stuff not related to the job. Yes, in the morning we were taking break between 30 minutes and 1 hour for a coffee. Yes we were taking one hour lunch break (or going to the beach for one hour instead of lunching.)
But... now I'm working in Luxembourg, I have twice my French salary, and I'm working less than in France.
Worked in that country myself, for some years ( aircraft constructor, currently world's largest ). The guy is right, and spot-on. Trying to get French people to actually be productive is one helluvajob. I was dealing with Thales, once, for avionics parts. Quite often, when I came in at the Thales plant, there would be drum beatings and red flags. When I asked what that was, I got the answer "We are on strike. That is a constitutional right of us, and we use it as we love it". Let such work forces, indeed, go to hell.
The only newspaper in the UK with a right wing bridge column. Noted for its trenchant attitude to the EU, the ECHR and its science-savvy journalists. (The latter is meant as sarcasm by the way).
Most support i get from US company is impolite, angry, terse, and have exactly the same type of behavior you describe. That is not because the stereotype about american is true, it is because some american are stupid and impolite, like some french are stupid and impolite. When you say the "prejudice" is sometimes true,you only confirm an inherent bias by not recognizing that the full breadth of character and behavior exists in all country. In fact as human we tend to do a lot of selection bias : we tend to not remember all the polite encounter and positive stuff which went without an hiccup, and remember very very well the very few negative one because they are so jarring compared to the rest.
Don't confuse selection bias with prejudice being real.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not naming the company make it look like a made up story. unverifiable. And since we are speaking of prejudice, prejudice of american against french being all high, it does not sound too far to imagine some american would get a kick to exaggerate a story, or put it into a light in their favor whereas the truth is more nuanced etc...
No we're not. We're talking about an American CEO saying that French workers are lazy and surly, which makes the comparison with workers in the US very much on topic.
And this is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, because exploitation of workers in the US is endemic and no other first-world country puts up with such conditions for their workers.
The French are actually much closer to where the civilized world should be than the US. After decades of high tech industrial revolution, 8 hour days should be down to 4 hours at the very least, instead of the crazy work hours and reduced holidays that Americans think are acceptable.
What about this story qualifies it to be on Slashdot? At least wait three days s/t cowboy can re-post it.
GDP US: M$ 14,991,300
Inhabitants US: 315,544,000
Gini: 47.7
HDI: 0.910
GDP France: M$ 2,775,518
Inhabitants France: 65,350,000
Gini: 28.9
HDI: 0.884
US GDP per person: $ 47509.38
France GDP per person: $ 42471.58
If the assumption is correct, that the French work only half the time, they are still similar effective than their US pendants. The French are super efficient people. And on top of it they have a much higher rate of equality (see Gini values). So if I have to choose, I would rather life in France then in the US (when I look at these figures). However, I do not think that a French human being is almost twice as efficient than an US citizen.
So the point the US dork made is wrong. The only thing he does not like are unions. Well if you do not like organized people, stay where you are. Don't come to Europe. We all have unions (even the British). Maybe he could go to Asia, they do not have worker unions in China.
...it is the American way as well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Many apparently-OK countries in Europe have been coasting on economic momentum of the past centuries. In recent years, they've also attained some economic growth from the integration of the European economy. France has also benefited from doing several things right, most notably their nuclear power sector, relatively low corporate tax rates, and of course their massive tourism revenue and highly-profitable exports of "fashionable" products. But this can only take them so far.
Their per-capita GDP numbers may appear to be almost as high as the United States, but you must understand how to analyze those numbers. GDP includes government spending, which is of questionable value. It is easier to have a high "per capita" anything when you've had a baby boom followed by very low fertility rates recently, so you have lots of workers at the peak of their earning potential, but relatively few children and stay-at-home moms. "Per hour worked" figures are artificially inflated by artificially reduced work hours. Etc.
--libman
That is the key question, though - is it "better" to have more stuff, or to have the time to enjoy it?
For the worker, I think the French system is superior. For the CEO, though - people such as Titan - the US system is far, far better.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applies very strongly here.
It's clear that this american CEO's worldview is pretty low down in Maslow's pyramid, since he values working for a living above all else.
That's probably true. Due to the enormous social welfare system in the Netherlands, most unproductive people are living on state benefits. That means the GDP/hour is driven by productive employees, but they're not making that much money after tax.
It's really sad to see how much of an hive for socialists /. has become.
I'm sorry but I don't buy your ideology. Socialism leads inevitably to state default and state default typically leads to a more authoritarian state. I'm not at all either into that "social democrat" thing: all it means is, to cut Godwin's law short, that just like the national-socialists right before nazi Germany took power they plan to use democracy to put in place a non-democratic government (a socialist government, with no way back out of socialism).
There was a recent "The Economist" article about Sweden: back in 1993 Sweden was a 70% of state public debt and the public spendings represented 67% of the GDP (!!!). The country was going into a wall. Thankfully some politicians and economists saw the line and reduced public spending back to saner level (less than 50% of the GDP) and meanwhile managed to lower the state public debt to 30% of the GDP.
This shows that there's a limit to socialism: the nanny state has its limits. You MUST have a private sector and you MUST be nice to the private sector if you don't want it to badly crash when there's any crisis. Take Estonia for example: they were suffocating the private sector with crazy high taxes... What happened in 2008-2009? Did all the state workers lose their jobs? No. Did all the socialists politicians lose their jobs? No... For these socialists the soup is always good and fat. What did happen is that the private sector did crash badly. Result? -25% of the GDP. Ouch.
That's socialism for you and that's precisely what is happening in France right now. People are living with a gigantic sense of entitlement and the public spendings represent 57% of the GDP and that number is growing fast. Why? Because the private sector *is* dying.
And it's going to get ugly.
Yet the amazing thing with socialists is that they always managed to whine and to point others: everything is the fault of finance. Everything it the fault of capitalism. Don't you dare point to them that when a country like France starts talking about nationalism (happening right now), we're dangerously close to the national-socialist ideology that the nazis used to reach power. No, the socialists are going to tell you that national-socialism was a right-wing ideology. That's when you point out to them that the nazis did apply height of the ten important points Marx put in place. Including a mostly planned economy.
Socialism does not work efficiently. It gives the illusion of working while it's accumulating crazy high state debt and then the default comes (just like Greece just defaulted and is going to default again and just like France is eventually going to default).
Indignant CEO in "CEO wailing assertions that he/she is entitled to others' hard work" shocker.
- 1 hour of helping the american you suckered in to visiting the asshole of China (it's never shanghai or beijing, it's always some shithole like guangdong or shenzhen) get laid by a prostitute
And if you do get laid by a hooker in Shenzhen or Suzhou and the authorities catch you, be prepared to get 'Indecent behavior' stamped on your passport and getting arrested before being set free for a ransom
What the Norwegians found was oil in their backyard.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If you want to live like you did in the 1950's you wouldn't have to work that hard.
1 car per family, 1000 sqft house with 1 car garage, 1 19inch TV, no cable, no cell phone, etc.
The fact is people value luxury and are willing to work for it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It is clearly implying that we need well-regulated militias with their own weapons not standing armies. There is plenty of evidence that the FFs were against standing armies. There is plenty of evidence that our standing armies have just been a tool for imperialism. Considering we could nuke the living shit out of the whole fucking planet with 1/10th of our nuclear arsenal, I fail to see the requirement for any other military drain on our economy. (and yeah, FUCK the defense industry - they are leaches that have poisoned our system to the point of treason)
The bottom line is that we do not need to "project power" anywhere in the world but to defend our borders - and it is quite clear that invading the US would be fucking stupid, so I don't see much risk in leaving that up to militias.
Protecting "our economic interests" is more complicated due to the lack of a true "free market" approach: fore example: if your business relies on foreign powers allowing you to extract the oil from their borders and they decide to nationalize their oil and kick you out - then your venture fucking failed and there is no reason why we the people should have to bail you out.
Since we got nukes, there has not been a legitimate threat of invasion. All we have now is "terrorism" that is really just a response to US terrorism.
It's called a part-time job, and a cupboard is all you will be able to afford.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
The French live longer, healthier, and lower stress lives than Americans. Americans are so caught up in squeezing blood from a stone, moving at unrealistic paces, and absolutely abusing each other that no one benefits. Even the wealthy in America live a poorer quality of life than their brethren in other countries around the world. So this CEO can feel free to simply go to China or India or wherever.
The slacking begins in middle. In Germany, the people at least try to work hardish. The countries below? Good luck finding the workers during the workday ;)
The biggest chance to see them on the workspot is when they're on a (real) break.
And of course the $3 doctor gives the same level of service, has the same training, and maintains the same level of medical cleanliness as the $50 US doctor. I can assure you this is not the case. I have a friend who was unfortunately in the mix of "Chinese Doctors" when he was nearly killed by what we'd consider malpractice. To be a doctor there you can go open a shop and claim to be a doctor. Training? Pshaw. Cleanliness? Why bother, that takes more time. Your rose tinted glasses have a few blind spots on them.
tora
I look forward to the day your Chinese overlords decide you lazy Americans are not working hard enough!
WTF? SLAVES WERE PAID IN BEING KEPT (fed, clothed, shelter) - which is what you're left with & BILLED FOR including taxes + utilities with shit jobs that leave you hand-to-mouth with no disposable or saveable income beyond those staple essentials. You? You're just playing a game with words is all you're doing attempting the typical trick the wealthy use in perception alteration by controlling the presses and the meaning of words. Nothing more. It's all done to keep you down, even when you know the game is rigged that way and 'depressions' are engineered to do so. When the middle class starts making money, without which you get no law to combat the wealthy in courts where law = money (and you get leaned on just like in a poker game with checks and bluffing where he who has the higher stack WILL win) is what "justice" really is. A big money game rigged for big money. Gotta stomp those potential and educated middle classers, so they can't get equality in courts of law. It's that simple. How to do it? Take away their income by offshoring jobs, putting your bought and paid for cronies into politics via connections and using the revolving door to change the rules to stomp out the ones that figure out ways around these games, fast. The 1%'ers don't want to give up their golden goose rigged monopoly game, and its down from the IMF on downwards, even to nations.
Hah. This guy's never spent much time away from his friends in their corner offices. That's not too far from what your average office worker in the U.S. has on their agenda each work day. Except that that time spent talking is spent in useless meetings listening to jerks like this CEO drone on about buzzword this and buzzword that. And, hell, guy... If we're not supposed to get an hour for lunch, then why do almost all companies start their work day at 8:00AM and finish at 5:00PM? That's supposed to include an hour for lunch. I guess what you really want is a nine hour work day disguised as an eight hour work day.
Every time I hear about the supposed horrible work conditions in France (from the point of view of idiots like this CEO) I start thinking it might not be the worst idea to brush up on my high school French and pull up the stakes. Are they running everything off of 50Hz power in France? I need to start looking for adapters or new power supplies for the computers.
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I read your crap Alex on freetalklive, you don't know shit about the Scandinavian countries. I laughed while reading your pathetic attempts at "explaining" my region, haha. It's obvious you have never been here.
This comes from another comment on another page. It seems that the real story went something like this:
Noone buys Tracktor tires, and the plant becomes unprofitable.
Management wants to shut down the plant.
Union prevents this.
Workers have to work short hours due to low demand.
Management still wants to get rid of the plant, trying to sell it to a US company.
US manager says its unprofitable and people only work short hours.
Union leaks this to the media, distracting from the fact, that they keep the plant unprofitable.
And I hope the Renewal Minister replied: ``Thank you for your `interesting' position. And we're glad our factories are not such an attractive buyout target. That way our citizens don't have to work for the likes of you.''
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In the US drug dealers don't fill out time cards. Seems like you might have pointed out a flaw in the system since I used to know a lot of drug dealers who made a lot of money working very little when they weren't dead or in jail.
is an idiot. Most factories that aren't run with slave labor are 90-99% machines. Look up how applesauce gets made, or sleeping bags, sometime. Hell, even with slaves Foxconn is switching to robots. We're running out work to do. My buddy drives truck for a living. 10, 15 years from now that job won't exist. Again, robots.
So, when there's not enough work to go around, what do we do? Do we let 98% starve (lazy bastards), 1% work as slaves and then 1% live like God-Kings? Do you know an alternative? I'm anxious to hear a solution that doesn't boil down to socialism.
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My previous job was working in a US office of a company owned by France Telecom. I had quite a bit of experience working with French colleagues both in the US and in France itself and I can tell you that our French workers were smart and conscientious. There are downsides to the French. They don't make friends easily with non-French people, they can't be fired, and there's a general aura of "We're better than everybody who's not French". If that guy buys a French factory, he'll never be able to get rid of anyone. But they weren't lazy. That's for sure. The French are better than Americans in general in not getting completely and utterly obsessed with work and some Americans resent that.
Eat the rich!
Labor is a world-wide competition now.
If TFA is correct, and I've only spent 2 days in France this year, then there is a real problem. France has some fantastic people and hard workers, of this I have no doubt. I've worked with more than a few like that over the years. If the workers are only producing 3 hrs of work daily, they need to be fired.
People around the world are all stupid. America does not have a lock on this. Everywhere has their share of idiots.
I've worked in labor union shops and non-union locations. Average workers in both were looking to be cared for by someone. It didn't seem to matter if that was the company management or the union leadership. I found the unions to be less willing to support corporate transformations than non-union locations. That means that being competitive and responsive to outside competition just doesn't work as well in a union shop. I constantly heard from union people "that is not in my job description."
Unions seem to be a leach on productivity to me. Once someone joins a union, they seem to loose sight that they are in control of their lives and drop into a "gotta make the donuts" mentality. If non-thinking robots is what a company wanted, they'd build a robotic assembly line.
My sister is in a union. Because she doesn't have much seniority - only 24 yrs - she is stuck with the worst choices for her 2 weeks of annual vacation. She works most holidays, but gets the week AFTER thanksgiving off. She used to be very smart and creative in her thoughts. That changed after she joined the union. The company where she works is just barely hanging on. Hardly any profits. I wouldn't want to be in that business.
I, on the other hand, work as a consultant and have not had less than 2 months off per year the last 10 yrs. I don't need the money, the work helps my mental wellness only. I do it because it is fun, not because I must. I spent almost a month overseas last year "for fun." I am in charge of my work to a great extent. I can work from almost anywhere in the world, provided there is a phone and broadband internet. Being on conference calls from Turkey or Hong Kong or Prague rocks. I am not the smartest person in the world by any measurment. All that I have are
* skills that are appreciated,
* well paid, and
* the balls to demand control over my work hours.
If you are working at a job that doesn't provide the freedom that you like - don't blame someone else. It is 100% your faults for most of the developed world. If you are reading this - you qualify. Pull your head out of your ass, think of a way to make a living that doesn't require you to be in a certain place all the time, then build a plan to make that happen. I did. It took about 6 yrs of extremely hard work and growing my skills, but once I was there, the world became my playground. My life is far from perfect, but at least in this area, provided I keep my clients reasonably happy, I am successful and well-paid.
Maybe that's the French way...but we don't shoot our kids in schools...
not exactly a model we want to follow. People complain about being wage slaves, but don't stop to consider how much better off they are than wage slaves in other countries where socialism has been adopted. Sure, everyone has healthcare, but when you go to the doctor they treat you as though you're one of the unwashed masses and most people get substandard care. Sure everyone can eat, but they can't do much more than that. In a communist (or socialist) society you will still have the elite and there will be even less chance to become one of them unless you are part of the family, or do something abolutely extraordinary for them. At least with capitalism if you work hard, educate yourself, and don't live foolishly you can be a very well to do wage slave.
Ultimately I think about a 3-hour work week is what the world is going to need. The alternative is going to be massive unemployment. What work do we really need to get done? Mainly farming and manufacturing. In that order. Both of these require far less labor than they did in the past due to technology. This trend is only going to accelerate. So far the sollution has been to just consume more. All that is really getting us is fat, in debt and filling our landfills.
We are going to have to shift people away from farming and manufacturing into other industries (as has been happening). But those industries don't have a use for all those workers either, not at a 40-hour work week and certainly not at the 80+ hours many factory workers have been acustomed to.
Is working less so bad? What has mankind been striving for in developing all this technology anyway? I hope it's not all just for more throw-away cell phones!
Unfortunately now that we have globalization this is a change that must occur everywhere at once to be successful. I don't see how this can happen when we still have developing nations where people are willing to work all the hours their bodies can push out just to get by and developed nations with a work ethic that was developed more to win a world war than anything applicable to today.
If this CEO is smart, he'll curtail any future travel to France. The guy's an absolute dick and one hopes he has no intentions on entering the diplomatic corps.
In his letter he clearly has the attitude that ``I'm a CEO -- a master of the universe -- so I can say whatever the hell I want to say!'' If there's any justice in the world, he'd be pulled off to the side after arriving for his next trip to France for a little body cavity search (and no lubrication!).
I'm from Illinois and I'd rather have our crooked politicians than CEOs like this living in the state. At least we can vote asshat politicians out of office.
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News at 11.
I agree that society is very interconnected (and we've ALWAYS been interdependent). That's what capitalism is all about, at the core of it. A farmer can't make money growing food if everyone else grows all of their own food, for example. The rest of us who didn't farm were interdependent on the farmers. Pretty much a universal truth, no matter what profession a person is in.
I simply take issue with your statement that all of this means "no one's hard earned money is entirely their own". IMO, money that's earned is a symbol of one's labor. (If you win a million dollars in a lottery? Well then, that's clearly money that isn't signifying your own labor accurately -- but that's one of the few exceptions society purposely constructed. Essentially, it uses money as a game/entertainment, just like casino gambling.)
On the whole though, you're compensated financially in return for labor performed. I know when I work, I'm giving up a certain number of hours of my time to do it, vs. doing anything else I might rather be doing instead. And the money I earn in return for that? Yes, I truly believe that is my own, too.
It's dangerous to follow that logic that simply because we're interdependent people, we're not fully entitled to the fruits of our individual labors.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well I guess the comment subject was in itself the punchline but the slash bot requires text.
Thus turning a elegantly sartorial comment into a "well you had to be there" moment.
Thanks a lot.
I read the CEO letter with some amusement, because some of the same thoughts have crossed my mind in the past. It's a pity that he diluted some good points by sounding rude and arrogant.
I've worked with French entrepreneurs (when I worked in Silicon Valley venture capital) and with French offices (when I've worked for global/international companies). I've directly managed people in France. Like most countries, there is an underlying culture, but it's not homogeneous. So, yes, I've witnessed French workers with a sense of entitlement and a desire to get as much money as possible in return for as little work as possible. This is not unique to France, but the local labor laws are such that they can be gamed to achieve that effect more than in many places. Between mandatory 35-hour work weeks, seemingly endless public holidays, "stress leave" (which can be due to genuine stress, or because you don't like your job/boss/whatever), 25+ days of paid vacation and labor laws that make it very hard to manage performance, it's a tough place to get real productivity. The last point is the toughest IMHO.
Before you get all bent out of shape that "management" means exploiting workers, it doesn't (have to) mean that. It means being able to reward hard work, diligence, self-improvement and great results with training, promotions, coaching and, yes, money. It also means being able to correct laziness, sloppiness and lack of effort with training and hands-on help, and to be able, ultimately, to fire people who don't want to put in the effort. You know who appreciates management firing poor workers the most? The other workers around them. A labor law climate that makes it hard to manage is really poisonous. Do you think that companies most of us admire, like Apple or Google, tolerate poor performance?
What's interesting is that many French workers I know complain about this, and the clock-watching attitude, and dislike it.
You know what? Many of them leave the country, because they can't stand it. Some drive across the border to the French part of Switzerland, which has fairly strict labor laws, but a different work ethic. The tech entrepreneurs come to Silicon Valley; the Valley is full of them, starting companies, raising money and creating value. In the US for the US. Not for France.
Clearly, in the long run, this brain drain isn't good for France. But the underlying culture of entitlement prevents serious reform.
All this says to me is that the French government needs to impose import tariffs on this type of sleazy company owner to prevent erosion of the French standard of living.
Bullshit.
We are also bound to the 48 hours limit.
But hours between 35 and 48 must be either overpaid or given back as vacation. And that 35 hours limit legally applies only to companies with more than 20 employees.
Most other EU countries also have a similar limit, but above 35.
And most managing jobs have employment contracts that make the pay not related to the hours worked, so the 35 hours limit doesn't apply. In that case, most get about 2 weeks of additionnal vacation (in addition to the legal 5 weeks).
Well, I agree with the gist of the argument, but fighting figures somebody pulled out of his backside with figures you pulled out of your own backside is futile.
The bottom line is that French workers are about on par with US workers in terms of the value they produce per hour worked. Depending on how you calculate that, claims could be made for the workers of either country, but either way American and French workers are pretty comparable (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked).
Remember, when an American CEO talks, his definition of "truth" is whatever puts the most money in his (and not necessarily even the shareholders') pocket.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
[citation needed]
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The fact is people value luxury and are willing to enslave others for it.
There, fixed that for you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anyone who has seen the Actual working conditions at the Big 3 automotive manufacturers knows what it's like there. Employees coming to work late, drinking on the job and sleeping it off in some remote location, or taking three or four hours lunches to play euchre on the clock. Using five workers to do the work of two, and much more slowly, as they need 'stretch the job out' or they'll have nuthin' ta do fer the rest o' th' day...
At least the French don't deny it.
True, however, that the rest of the basic labour force has been reduced to little more than slave labour conditions for minimum wage that no 'self respecting' American would do, resulting in foreign workers coming into the country en masse to conditions that are far superior to what they were experiencing 'back home'.
Maybe it's time kids were taught the meaning of decent work for decent pay, and showed an interest in working at the many Manual Jobs out there that the immigrant workers are taking over. They are leaving themselves out in the cold for jobs that are over staffed, over trained (or poorly trained for), since they all want a sweet, tech based job that pays excessively well, for little effort, and are unwilling to get their hands dirty doing anything that takes real physical effort.
MCSE? There's at least a dozen each three months churned out at the community college. Ever wonder why, in any given college town there are computer shops popping up like pimple on teenagers, then blowing away after a few months?
Nobody seems willing to work at the local warehouse system but migrants. Nobody wants to subject themselves to those 'slave labour conditions' here.
Just ask them what is was like back home for a real Wake Up Call on expectations from the working class!
It certainly goes both ways. Employers pay peanuts, they get unskilled monkeys, then bitch about the quality of the work...
Our nuclear weapons program, as a start. Then the entirety of USSOCOM. Our aircraft carriers. Most of our submarines. All currently-planned weapons development programs. I would definitely cancel the JSF program. Any soldiers who would be put out of a job by this could take over jobs currently under contract, such as base security, cleaning services, food prep, etc.
Fully half of military officers graded O6 or higher could be let go. Every single civilian defense agency under the DoD should have its entire contract staff fired immediately and be reorganized to make do with civilian personnel. Any roles that cannot be filled with the civilian workforce should be examined and eliminated, if possible.
I could go on. There is literally too much waste to even account for, which is why DoD hasn't even attempted an internal audit in a long time.
That's an ADVANCED society.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...And it didn't really work, apparantly. France is only two placed behind the US in GDP per hour worked.
"per hour worked"...
The whole point you say didnt work, was that the extra hours we dont need to work due to extra productivity, is worked anyways creating extra TOTAL GDP. If the french decide to quit when the productivity level is equal to 1950 levels, then they are losing 3-5 hours of extra productivity, which affects the TOTAL GDP. Whereas, LordLucless' point was that "We used those productivity gains to increase our GDP rather than shorten our workday."
BTW, good job referencing wikipedia as if it were a reliable source.
These guys are running an international corruption syndicate and then have the audacity to ridicule other people's work ethics ? The world is fucked I tell you.
The Commission's complaint alleges that, from 1999 to 2001, Titan paid more than $3.5 million to its agent in Benin, Africa, who was known at the time by Titan to be the President of Benin's business advisor. Titan failed to conduct any meaningful due diligence into the background of its agent either before his retention or thereafter and also failed to ensure that the services alleged to be performed by the agent, and described in his invoices, were in fact provided to Titan. The complaint alleges, in 2001, at the direction of at least one former senior Titan officer based in the United States, Titan funneled approximately $2 million, via its agent in Benin, towards the election campaign of Benin's then-incumbent President. The complaint also alleges that some of these funds were used to reimburse Titan's agent for the purchase to T-shirts adorned with the President's picture and instructions to vote for him in the upcoming election. According to the complaint, Titan made these payments to assist the company in its development of a telecommunications project in Benin and to obtain the Benin government's consent to an increase in the percentage of Titan's project management fees for that project. The complaint alleges that a former senior Titan officer directed that these payments be falsely invoiced by the agent as consulting services and that actual payment of the money be broken into smaller increments and spread out over time. The complaint does not allege that the then-incumbent President knew of the payments.
[...]
According to the complaint, Titan falsified documents that enabled its agents to under-report local commission payments in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In addition, the complaint alleges that Titan falsified documents presented to the United States government by under-reporting payments on equipment exported to Sri Lanka, France and Japan. The complaint also alleges that Titan (i) paid a World Bank Group analyst in cash to assist Titan in its project in Benin, and (ii) paid a Benin government official approximately $14,000 in travel expenses from 1999 to 2001.
Before you throw around the term "slave" you should really understand the meaning.
I am a Frenchman and I would really like to set the record straight on this story. Unfortunately I am currently not at work and will respond further when I get back.
The nature of freedom is that you and I trade value for value. Obviously everyone depends on others, but they exchange value for it and consequently pay for what they receive. If I am not getting value from the local supermarket, I go to the farmer's market. If I don't get value from the auto-repair shop, I learn and do it myself.
The trick is, if someone says 'Non, non, non Monsiueu !' it will be done by tomorrow morning.
If they say 'Oui, oui, oui !" give up.
American CEO's like to make slaves of their workers. Treat them like dirt, give them horrible health care if any at all, discourage any vacation time and then fire them for fun. This has to be the worst place on earth to work and American managers and corporate officers are more like predators than humans. I hope this CEO loses his job and everything he has stolen from the broken backs of his slaves.
He's probably talking about Annual visit under an insurance plan.
"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"
Seems like the French union reps agree.
[citation needed]
It's really not, there are plenty of studies on the subject, feel free to remain ignorant and lazy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I always love reading Slashdot opinions on business topics. They're hilarious--people with more opinions than experience lamenting that some evil one-percenter is just screwing the poor hard working folks to get that extra nickle on their bonus. How, if they were in charge of a business, they would give lavish pay and benefits, be a champion of the little man and show those fat cats up.
But they aren't in charge of a business and never have been. The closest most people here get to owning a business is claiming the room they keep their computer in as a home office on their taxes. They have never had to hire or fire people working for them, not as some department manager firing one of his staff, but as an executive of a company having to make an existential business decision to fire an employee or jeopardize a department, layoff an entire department or risk shutting down an entire building, or close an entire plant or risk losing the company.
Having to make decisions based not on fanciful ideals they once had a really good gut feeling about, but actual deadlines, cash flow statements, unpaid client bills, rent and mortgage changes, supplier price fluctuations, insurance costs, tax liabilities, regulation compliance and fickle state and federal legislatures who love to pass feel-good laws, changes one's ideas of business. The chief executive of Titan made a decision based on over two-decades of executive business experience. He was an engineer before that, so he can't be too stupid. I wager he knows his industry better than anyone on Slashdot and his company better than everyone on Slashdot combined. And yet, as always, Mountain Dew slurping, mouse jocky experts come out of the woodwork to criticize him because he's a successful businessman making successful business decisions.
Yes, you may never have run so much as a lemonade stand, but I'm sure you can run circles around a guy with 23 years of experience running a $1.2 billion company.
It's really not, there are plenty of studies on the subject, feel free to remain ignorant and lazy.
It's not the kind of thing that's trivial to find, or at least, it's as trivial to find counterexamples. If you have a compelling citation, I'm interested. Otherwise I have to file it with all the other shit that economists say would be bad for the economy, that other economists say would be good for the economy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its fucking easy since we have more than 40% of the world's defense spending.
Start by lining up the generals:
Fired, Fired, Fired, Keep
The remaining generals I would order to cut 3/4 of their budget; and they get to figure out which parts. They're paid to know what they need to fight a war both today and tomorrow.
Man, these 3-hour work days are killing me!
George Jetson
So... Do they have collapsible flying cars as well?
If equivalently 25 people are loafing around doing nothing, your support load is the same. If it's any higher, then you actually have less work than they do.
I work full time. I can barely afford my rent. It's a bit more than a cupboard, but strangely enough all the cupboards cost exactly the same as this. Regardless of landlord. I think that's some sort of informal price fixing going on, where they all decided it would be to their collective benefit never to offer anything under £500/pcm.
I had a roommate who was a union plumber and I really couldn't believe how fucking bad the union was. It really didn't do shit for him. The real telling thing was during the recession. I mean what someone does for you in times of plenty isn't nearly as telling as in times of need. Well basically he sat at home, idle, because they had no work. He got a "raise" during that period because he'd reached the next tier in their ranking system, but there was no work so it didn't do shit.
They had no unemployment assistance or anything, all their training was paid-for education through the University of Phoenix. In fact, he couldn't collect government unemployment insurance because he was still technically employed. They would release him at his request (which he eventually did) and he'd then be eligible but they warned him he'd then be at the back of the line to get a job back when work came back.
They still wanted their union dues though, those were not waived despite lack of work. Oh, and they told him if he left, he couldn't take a non-union job for 2 years. Such preventions aren't legal in this state, but they told him anyhow.
I really can't see anything useful they did for him. I mean I guess on paper he had reasonably high pay per hour, though I don't have a scale of other plumbers to compare it to, but that doesn't do any good if hours worked = 0. Their concern seemed to be to protect the union and collect dues, not to look out for their employees.
If I had the money, I'd buy the factory. And start an ad campaign all over France, featuring the CEO's letter, and then saying: buy French, boycot highway robbers.
And I just *adore* the kiddies here on slashdot, who think that they're worth the money they make working 60 or 80 hours a week, and look down on unions, that force 1.5x for > 40 hr, and even the chance to have an actual life.... but, no, you live to work, you don't work to live, because you have no life, or significant others, or....
mark
Our society (USian) as a whole worships the CEO class right now. This behavor is an outgrowth of that.
There is no reason to give credibility to it. If the story didn't have the "he's a CEO" aspect we'd question why his opinion was important. Just because he is a CEO doesn't mean that he has credibility if you look at the world with a critical eye.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I visisited an east german company for electric motors in 1990, and was quite surprised by the huge number of people crowding the place. As some of these motors have been in production for remote controlled cranes, I asked my guide why they operated their own cranes with a bunch of ladies instead.
Answer: the state (the guide meant GDR) has an obligation to give a job out to everyone, so they left the old stuff in place to be able to offer jobs as crane operators. With the sale of the factory to a west german company 80% of the staff were fired. Result: the remaining people, aka their town, companies and the state, had to pay these with "welfare" money via rising taxes. Productivity increases, output stays at the same level, but the overall balance shows only a difference for the few people in charge of the "new" company. These guys made a fortune out of it :-)
The federal owned company model, widley used in france, seems to operate on a similar mindset, but is better tuned - as long as the company earns some profit it makes no difference wether you pay wages or welfare, but for social reasons wages look better. When the profits turning red some people have to go.
US model, strict capitalism: you can get rich as private owner of such a company by firing as many as possible and have somebody else (aka the remaining workers) pay the welfare for the laid off ones. Make sure nobody taxes the welfare money out of you, ask for reduced taxes, and a workers union is a no-go.
With the rise in productivity profits and welfare money rise similar. Choose one of the models above.
I pray something like WW2 never happens again, because of the POOR WORK ATTITUDE of the average American worker, they'd never be able to pull off the incredible amount of production, they did during ww2. Between the unions wanting every other made up holiday off, work breaks every hour, smoke breaks every other hour, to the "I stayed up too late playing ________, I can't come in today, the average American worker thinks they are OWED a job, OWED healthcare, this entitlement, that benefit just because. Until the USA gets back to its roots, it will remain the sewer it has become in the last 50 years.
Just once in my life to see a global worker action for like 3 months of no one finger lifted.
In California, tenure comes after two years.
Although you are "tenured" (removed from probationary status) after two years, that doesn't mean you can't be furloughed. All tenure does is secure your spot on the bottom of the senority list for your school. If you are near the bottom of that list and the school district needs to layoff some-number of teachers, you probably still lose your job. Moving to a new school district will start the clock again.
With the current budgetary environment in California, this isn't a merely theoretical, it is what is happening to nearly all recently hired teachers. Even surviving to tenure, nearly all people on the bottom of the senority list get layoff notices every year until the districts figure out their budget, and hire most (but not all) of them back. Young, enthusiastic, qualified teachers (including several who were friends of mine) are leaving the state for more stable job opportunities elsewhere.
Basically, tenure doesn't mean much in the CA system. Non-tenured means simply the probationary period (kind of like a teacher internship) is still going on. Basically it's all about senority with teachers.
Of course nobody like a layoff, but real organizations (including non-profit organizations) would use an unfortuante layoff opportunity to clean house, where as schools are forced to simply sacrifice the future for today.
You, sir, are awesome. I've been looking for those words for years. I will plagiarize these two paragraphs to death, I hope you don't mind.
Thats nothing, I work for a US corporation and I spend 6h on bullshit every day. Seariously! I am 20% as productive as when we was a startup (and so effective that we could impress a multinational comapny). The bs involves explaining my work in metrics and acronyms my superiors can report to their superiors (it is really just abstract figures with no relation to actual progrss) and folowing policies set up to prevent some misuse of company funds (but the policies are so badly worded that all actual work is severely hindered and any thief has just to change his thefts slightly to be policy compliant. and etc. that is so depressing that I go fine tuning resume thater than telling them...
No one has answered that question.
Instead I see a lot of brain washed socialists here who cannot imagine that chance and happenstance actually occur - Bill Gates was at the right place at the right time AND was brilliant at doing business. That's why he's so rich.
So, what's the alternative to Capitalism (which requires a free society)? Pervasive government control (read: Socialism and/or Communism)?
Why is government considered so pure and altruistic? Which of the most prolific mass murders didn't commandeer a government to achieve their atrocities? Of the top 10 mass murders in history, there totals at least 250 Million murdered at the hands of the governments they wielded.
For that very reason, the United States' Founding Fathers expressly limited our government from abridging our basic, natural, divinely apportioned right to keep and bare arms: to protect us from those who would wield governments against us... whether foreign or domestic.
Titan International is based in Quincy, Illinois. Having lived in Quincy, Illinois for years and having done business with Titan, International I can tell you they are not slave drivers. Taylor is a hard ass. He does expect hard work. He does take issue with certain unions but he's willing to work with them when they are making reasonable demands for concessions. No, he's not some out of touch elitist.
Taylor owns (or at least did own, maybe it's been sold) a rock radio station because he wanted the town to have music on FM radio that he likes. The station's nickname is his nickname: "The Grizz". He ran for the Republican nomination for president in the past, and IIRC he was the only candidate to do so who could tell reporters the price of a loaf of bread or gallon of milk.
Morry's gruff and doesn't mind hurting some feelings, but he's not trying to keep people down. He comes from a hard-working background and he expects hard work for good pay. His factories offer some of the highest blue-collar pay in the areas they are located. His office staff aren't exactly underpaid either. I found doing contract and freelance work for them to be pretty much a fair deal even when we weren't in perfect agreement on terms. They were working on meeting their interests and I was working on mine.
In FL a new 4 year grad earns 45k+pension+benefits. Most teachers I know work from 8-3 in the classroom and a few hours outside of that, and a many of them hold second hand jobs, not because they have to by any means, but to simply support frivolous expenses. Add in the ridiculous amount of holidays and summer off, and they are one of the most overpaid professions in my opinion. It takes little special education and ability to teach and almost anyone can do it. Could I walk into any classroom tomorrow K-12 and teach it, yes with out a doubt.
IIZENII, you obvious know nothing about teaching, have never taught, and likely do not know any teachers. My father was a professor, and I have been in contact with teachers throughout my life. In addition, while my chosen career did not explicitly call for teaching, I made it a point to ensure that I taught my clients enough about what I was doing that the problems they were having were no longer complete mysteries. Let me address some of your points - first off, there is that working day. Most teachers I have known typically get to their classroom at least an hour before school starts, to make sure that they are up to speed on the day's lessons, do final checks that the materials they need are at hand and the room is fairly neat. As for the time afterwards, even taking your numbers it means that teachers work upwards of two hours of unpaid overtime every day. If the tests a teacher gives require more than checking one option of a multiple choice question, then, it can take up to an hour to grade. With too many classrooms having 40 or so students in them, that is anywhere from 20 to 40 hours of other work each week. Add to that the time that it takes the teacher to re-work lesson plans to take into account new data, or the changes implemented by politically motivated school boards and you add more hours to the week.
As for what teacher's earn...The salaries in the high-population states may be relatively high, but, as others have pointed out, the cost of living can be much higher. In Tennessee, for example, the average salary is closer to $37K. In the 1960s, that would have been a good wage. Now, it is close to allowing the teacher to receive food stamps and other state aid. If the teacher is a single person, with no children, it is quite possible to exist on that level of income. All you have to give up are vacations, eating out, and tickets to entertainment events. If the teacher happens to be a single mother, the situation is much, much more challenging.
Finally, as for your remark that "anyone can teach". I have to take issue with that after decades of observing the profession, both from the inside and the outside. Being able to present information is a skill that anyone can have. Being able to teach it - I. E. present it to a student in a form that allows them to understand it, and incorporate that understanding into their model of reality - is more of a gift. The problem is that no two people learn in the same manner, so, what works with one will fail with another. When I am explaining concepts about how the computer works, for example, I have to find concrete examples that people can grasp. To explain how a hard drive works, with one person I might use the example of the pigeonholes that the Post office used to use for sorting mail. With another person, a room full of filing cabinets works better. With a third person, referring to the stacks of a library gives them insight to start them on the path of understanding. Good, gifted teachers understand this, and can tell when a student is not getting it, and, can work to find that concrete example that brings understanding. Poor teachers are only able to present the data they have in one fashion. I am reminded of "The Big Bang Theory", and Sheldon Cooper as a perfect example of the latter teacher. His character is, without a doubt, a genius who is perfe
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
which is to let the gains in productivity put people out of work, drive down wages and then raise costs for the (very small) number of servants the rulers and the owners need. You're right, there will be work, but if there's very little of it and your entire quality of life depends on it then we'll all fight among ourselves for it.
Basically, the mistake you're making is you assume you're needed. You're not. There's a million, no billions just like you. Again, it's the whole 'American Exceptionalism' thing. Ya, you might not be American, but you're not immune from the sentiment...
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paid like shit because there's 10 million guys just like them gunning for their jobs.
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Productivity has risen so much since 1950 that we should be able to work 4 hour days.
You probably can, but you'd have to go back to living how people did in 1950. Family in a 400 sq ft house. One old car. Only appliances are a stove and washing machine. One weeks worth of clothes. Porridge every day for breakfast because that's what you can afford. That was what was considered middle class in 1950.
Given how productive we are these days the goal of the rich western nations should be a three day work week, of 5 hour days with lots of vacation time.
There would be much less unemployment, workers would be happy, and there would be leisure time for spending and keeping the economy going.
OK, maybe I exaggerate, but one day there will be NO work that machines can't do. It will be a bigger upheaval than the industrial revolution. It will end capitalism as we know it. I expect the transition to suck, but once that's over it will be GREAT.
Anarchists never rule
what's to keep the world from becoming one big North Korea, where a few ultra wealthy have use the military to keep everything to themselves...
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You really need to research medical tourism.
You are probably right that the $3 doctor is that bad.
But the $12 doctor (as compared to our $50 doctor) is often equally trained and has a higher level of trained nursing staff.
You can go to india and china and guam and taiwan and get very high quality care for about 15 to 20% of the price as in the U.S. And stay in a luxury hotel quality hospital room for a couple weeks instead of being punted out after 3-4 days like in the U.S.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Dud... I live in a house built in 1955.
It's 1200 square feet + 500 square foot converted garage and a carport. And add another 500 square feet un conditioned patio and then another 200 square foot storage shed. It cost $68,000 in 1998 (and $155,000 today). Those built in 1950 were about 1200 sq feet but were on quarter acre lots because land was so damn cheap.
Your point is valid about smaller houses but 400 square feet is overdoing it a bit. :-)
And the car was new. At least my grandpa's was all the way back to 1946. New cars much more often than today. They drove all over the country in those cars too.
Agree on the appliances but add a spanking new 9" black and white TV and a refrigerator.
Definitely a clothesline and iron.
Cold cereal, eggs and bacon - possibly at the K&P store counter.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The French are a bunch of stuck up, racist faggots that are arrogant, smell like ass and always support giving nuclear technology to lunatics that lead religious extremists who say we are the great satan and should all be killed. Their economy sucks, their country smells like armpits, and their food is absolutely disgusting.
I wouldn't do anything in France. France stinks.
I new they had the best free health care in the world but the best working conditions too
What are we doing wrong?!
How many hours do CEOs typically work per day again?
The US isn't that far down the socialist way yet, but the current administration (and some prior ones) keep taking us steps in that direction.
I am not a 'profit at all costs' guy, but instilling a work ethic, and getting paid for the risks you take, is important. Getting a reasonable return on investment, and reasonable wage is important.
The 1900's work ethic may be 'old hat' but we need to put some of the ethic back in the mix. Personally, I find work fun. Not all of it, of course, but enough to keep me interested and liking going back. If my company can't make money off of my efforts, I need to not be there. And if I cannot feel sufficiently rewarded, I need to do something else.
The French, Italians, and any other group has their own method of 'corporate culture', and even if I don't agree with them, we can do business elsewhere. So just move on.
Now how can I get my ROI up?
Managers?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Results are all that matter. If someone says a job is difficult (s)he is incompetent. Hire the over-qualified.
Admittedly, French factory workers generally don't leave work too tuckered out. Alternately, French factories don't have a need to put safety netting on the roof to keep indentured workers from jumping off to escape their servitude.
But we in the U.S. have itch-youz, too. I went for a job interview where I was told by the hiring manager to not bother sitting down, they weren't hiring any Americans, "interviews" were just a formality so they could get more H-1Bs. Yep. NO SHIT! They were dragging people from India as fast as they could to work for a straight $8/hr with no insurance benefits, no holidays, vacation, or sick time. They all had to have 2nd jobs to pay rent. Many of them had to borrow large amounts of money from their extended families to bribe the Indian headhunters to even get them to the U.S. Furthermore, the company had their visa, so they couldn't even seek employment elsewhere.
How do I know this? I happened to meet one of their poor guest workers. She had a security badge from the company and I asked how she liked her job. She DIDN'T. She said it was a terrible place to work. She was a programmer. She and her husband had about $20000 in debt back home they'd scrounged up to get their U.S. jobs. She was pregnant. She couldn't get any time off to go to the doctor for prenatal care. The best she could do was a doc-in-a-box near her other job. Once the baby was born, she was probably going to lose her job. She wasn't sure she'd be able to stay in the U.S. Her husband hadn't seen her in about 5 months because his job with the same company was in another state. He wasn't going to be able to come when the baby was born.
The more I listened to this poor girl (I say "girl" because she's young enough to be my daughter), the more I though this story sounded more like it had been written by Charles Dickens or Harriet Beecher Stowe. And this was in 2006! She KNEW that most people didn't get treated like that--HELL, She worked at a SUBWAY for her 2nd job and they treated her MUCH better than the other company. PAID her more per hour, too. Still didn't have health care, but WOULD have it from Subway after she was there 6 months. Wouldn't pay for the baby, but I suppose it was some comfort.
Nasty things happen when history, culture and capitalism come together.
In America, we never had people throwing rocks in the streets, or the degree of labor organization that allowed for general strikes that shut down not just an industry, but whole sections of all industry the way they have in Europe. Without those things in our history, Americans accept the nature of Capitalism more easily than others do and without the boost being able to sell to a postwar world full of shattered and missing industries gave the U.S. economy, it is impossible for American industry to pacify workers, provide a profit for investors and maintain constant growth.
The result of this is business consolidation (fewer companies controlling more and more of all industry), wage stagnation, unemployment, predatory lending by banks that turn people with jobs into debt peons or use their mortgages to create derivatives-based real-estate bubbles, and a lot of other things that just don't bear thinking about by anyone who wants to make it until lunch with his sanity intact.
Oh, and the kicker in all this: a global business culture that has worked to make a backward, repressive, corrupt, environmentally lethal dictatorship, the most economically powerful nation in the world. The American response to all of this: "Obama's a socialist! He wants to take away our freedom (to be exploited by banks and insurance companies)!"
So. I'm thinking I'm thinking of writing a science fiction alternative history where the dominant species evolved from something else. Who wants to collaborate?
So, I'm working in Grenoble France for a few weeks (US company) and I'm in the middle of some intense dev work so I go to the bistro and get a cary-out lunch and take it back to my desk. You'd have thought I'd grown an extra head the way my French co-workers looked at me. Eventually some guy from the site came and told me it was against the rules to eat at your desks and that in the future I was expected to use all 90 minutes at lunch away from my desk. Most of the French workers there were using 120 minutes of their 90 minute lunch regularly.
Same planet, different worlds.
Organization? You must be joking..
Being Canadian dutch and growing up in a dutch community there are two general characteristics that make dutch successful. Short arms and deep pockets.
On the serious side, we are not afraid of work BUT we expect to be fairly compensated. When it comes to money we'd rather spend more on quality than less on junk. Combine these traits with being generally damn good engineers and entrepreneurs and you have a productive, no BS society. The dutch get shit done while others form committees.
Negative traits - cannot ever, to save our lives, admit we are wrong.
only that those downsides are better than the status quo.
No, it could be really bad, and most likely would plunge us into a recession immediately after going into effect.
I could see huge disruption if you went from zero tariffs to 10000% overnight. However, all you need to do is pass the law, have it go into effect in a year, and slowly ramp up over 5-10 years. That is slow enough to allow supply chains to adapt.
The tariff could be tied to environmental protections, worker safety, social safety net, and minimum wage. So, it might remain near-free trade between the US/EU/Jap/Aus/etc, and as you get into the third world tariffs would become considerable. However, any country could implement first world standards and benefit from free trade. The tariffs would not be set at a level to be discriminatory based on nationality alone. They'd just be enough to eliminate any incentive to do the race for the bottom.
The problem is that the very people who keep touting the power of the market have created a market where most work will never be done. It is their job to find ways to create a profit from work, and they're not doing it.
The problem is opportunity cost. The profit in fixing a bridge or whatever is pretty low, and there isn't much political advantage to spending the government funds to do it. The profit in selling Ponzi schemes to retirement funds is much higher, and there is plenty of campaign donations to go around to fund votes to support all the subsequent bailouts.
The US has become a country where doing tangible work has become unappealing to investors, to the point where a third of our economy consists of nothing more than shuffling money around while somehow tacking a few percent onto each transaction. Building things takes time measured in months, requires effort to manage, and has modest rewards. Financial schemes can be executed in microseconds for much higher returns.
...short and pathetic life. That CEO probably has never worked until he passed out from heat stress, worked till blisters on his hands popped and bled, or been sunburned so bad that it never healed. So I say he is nothing more than the investors lapdog getting steak dinners every night and a pat on the head GOOD BOY! You suckass MFer!!!
Pushing yourself until your body is damaged is hardly the same as "real work." You can demonstrate determination and resolve to get things done without abusing your physical self.