John Lewis boss Andy Street asked yesterday whether he was still being forced to compete on an unlevel playing field with the likes of Amazon.
He was right to do so. He is not.
ITN asked me to join the debate. The report, and clip from last night's ITN news, is here.
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Well, that’s the point about a ‘business friendly’ government: they are generous friends to some businesses, not all.
Ask an optician about that one, and discover who was buying out all the independents using tax-free money…
…In 2009, when their most dangerous competitor became the barely-profitable subsidiary of a brass plate in Geneva, and cut their tax bill from £1.2 Billion to £224 Million.
Also: good luck getting any media outlet to run impartial commentary on a company with a nine digit media spend.
It’s a mystery to me why UK shareholders are not up in arms as well. The same issue was flagged up some years ago by Justin King when CEO of J Sainsbury. It must be an issue for M&S, Tesco et al and admid their well publicised declines in non food, lack of tax fairness would surely represent a tailor made excuse!
MayP perhaps the ownership structure is part of the problem (and the solution) here. Why would City of London/hedge funds/VC’s/global shareholders want to question a system that overall works in their favour even if a few of their individual investments may may a bit more tax than others.
Listed plc’s and businesses owned by tax avoiders/evaders are far less likely to rock the boat that their owners have spent years steering in their preferred direction.
John Lewis and other organisations that are either worker owned or not influenced by shareholders with a vested interest in tax avoidance/evasion are the ones that are really suffering and should be shouting the loudest.
may may – should of course read may pay
The managing director talks about ‘fairness’ but is happy to outsource cleaning staff:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/13/john-lewis-model-ethical-cleaners
Off topic but redolent of institutional hypocrisy.
Simon I’m not sure its institutional hypocrisy or the reality of co-operatives having to compete in a capitalist world.
The problem of non-owner employees is not unique to John Lewis, the same occurs at Mondragon on a larger scale, and it may well be that co-operatives trying to be like and compete with capitalist enterprises is what lies at the root of the problem.
Rather than compromise the the original co-operative values, an alternative approach would be for each co-operative to stay small and niche, perhaps through a mandatory cap in their articles of association/constitution on the financial and/or human size of each co-op. Accepting this would restrict any economies of scale, but this is part of the problem with capitalism itself.
The world of bigger is better is not a place co-operatives should aim to be in my opinion, as the Co-Operative Society has found out to its peril with both the Co-Op Bank and Retail/Wholesale groups all struggling with being “too big to care”.
I am less concerned with a Co-op outsourcing to another Co-op to take advantage of sectoral differences in pay, but even that starts to accept that the market has a place to play in determining the value of human beings and strikes me as the start of the slippery slope again.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/frederick-guy/outsourcing-and-employee-ownership-growth-versus-equity
Good points Keith, sound like it might be the ‘gravitational pull’ of the market dictating the race to the bottom again.