The Guardian reports this morning that:
Britain's manufacturers are struggling to recruit skilled workers and keep pace with global technology, according to an industry report that criticises the government for lack of support.
Three-quarters of companies say they have faced difficulties finding the right workers in the last three years, according to business group EEF. It warns a skills shortage is putting productivity growth at risk and adding to pressure on manufacturers as they battle a host of pressures in domestic and overseas markets.
Let's just deconstruct that for a moment.
Business wants a flexible labour market, and the right to hire and fire.
But that means it is not worth investing in training.
What is more business does not want to pay tax.
But they do want the government to ensure that the employees business refuses to train are readily available, on tap, when required.
The words cloud, cuckoo and land come to mind.
It really is time that those writing reports of the type referred to realised four things.
The first is that if they want to make profit they must invest.
Second, the biggest investment required in a skills based economy is in people.
Third, government is good at providing training but it is bound to be generic: it cannot be as specific as most businesses need.
And fourth? Training has to be paid for. And logically the person to pay is the person requiring the skill.
It really is time business stopped trying to free-ride everyone else and then blame anyone but themselves for the consequences.
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Hurrah.
But business isn’t listening.
Worse: it’s ears are blocked.
Construction faces increasing skills problems, not enough skilled tradespeople. Solution? Immigrant labour.
This is nothing new. Faced with the “migration” of skilled trades from one employer to another (higher paying) employer, business adopted the idea of partial training: training people just enough to do a job, but not enough to be interesting to other employers.
In fact, the lack of “business think” in UK business is extremely alarming.
Business depends upon its workforce, you would think they would be interested in having the best trained workers they could have. Apparently not.
I’ve said for a major part of my life that the UK suffers most, in business, from one thing: lack of management ability. Nothing has changed in over 40 years in that respect.
Lack of investment in British manufacturing in both employee’s training, R+D and new plant and machinery can be traced back 1880s. Its very clear from the poor levels productivity, you can’t compete with Germany or Japan if you are crippled by
greed of shareholders and directors.
The contrast couldn’t be greater, could it, between “benefit junkies” and “yoyo”? Between the corporate and the individual.
On the one hand, businesses sitting on mountains of cash reserves, but turning up blubbing on the Government’s doorstep, asking for handouts, and holding a scrawled notice “Got any spare change,Gov? Greedy CEO and shareholders to support”. And the Government, in Nye Bevan’s words “stuffs their mouths with gold.”
Individuals, in a tight corner, with no savings to fall back on, but needing to claim the shrinking JSA/ESA pittance to tide them over, until they get on their feet (as did the novelist, J.K.Rowling, who says she could NEVER have managed to become a novelist, without Social Security support at a crucial time in her life), and the Government says “YoYo” = “Your on your own, chum”, and calls you a scrounger and a skiver, and submits you to endless undignified and unnecessary, and in some cases lethal, scrutiny before grudgingly handing over some of what is yours by right of having worked and paid and voted for.
Ask yourselves, just WHO are the REAL benefit junkies?
Aye, and it’s not just the Government who apply this double standard. You can find this narrative in the echo chamber this country has become as people who should know better from the chip papers of tomorrow of the dead tree and the broadcast corporate media right down to the loud mouthed ignorant hypocrites in the pub, or on the bus, or sitting or living next door to you or me.
Blathering on in pseudo superiority mode about the mote in the eye of disabled, the pensioners, those seeking work etc who have no choice but to survive on shrinking social security whilst giving a totally free pass to the corporate parasites who get and are given a free ride many orders of magnitude greater and higher than those these know it all know nothings live amongst.
Without this tacit support and endorsement, this mindless evidence free zone of cringing supplicancy of metophorical touched forelock and doffed cap towards ‘our betters’, which demeans and impoverishes us all in so many ways on so many levels, these real benefit junkies would not be getting away with what they get away with. One wonders how those who, despite all evidence to the contrary, continue to parrot and support this false inverted reality narrative manage to get through the day. No heart, no spine, no guts, no brain, no shame, no empathy.
The corporate benefit junkies will continue to get away with this while ever there are so many willing dupes rebroadcasting and defending them whilst attacking the increasing numbers who fall by the wayside as a direct result of their habit.
Clearly what you are describing Richard is the inevitable result of private financial profit seeking, market forces and competition – which by their very nature will cause all businesses to drive down their own costs in order to increase their own profits at the expense of anyone and everyone else (the state, labour force, suppliers, customers, the environment etc etc).
But it is a self-defeating systemic problem, which is why capitalism has never succeeded in its raw form anywhere because the seeds of its own destruction are inherently in-built into its own flawed design. Hence why the state has to step in to regulate and compensate for its constant failures, and hence why the capitalists know they can fall back on the state as the lender of last resort and increasingly push it for more and more financial support in all forms it can imagine.
So what is the solution – more patching, more regulation, more taxing, more financial support or a final recognition that it is a failed system and after several hundred years of trying to make it work for the benefit of society as a whole it is time to for a major change to the dominant form of finance and production?
I am not sure that the world is ready for a complete change as yet
It won’t happen suddenly, but since 2008 the recognition of systemic failure has been apparent and the public interest in fundamental change has noticeably increased (perhaps in no small part due to the success of your work and many other independently minded sources of information and ideas exchange).
It seems clear to me that those people not wedded through vested interests to the status quo are now starting to focus on developing alternative economic and financial models in order to
a) survive
b) seek a better life
c) help save the planet
It took capitalism several decades (if not centuries) to emerge as the dominant economic model from the remains of feudalism and mercantalism, both of which still exist today in lesser forms (as do slavery and tribal societies). I see no reason why a new dominant model will not emerge from the activities that are happening in the grass roots of societies across the world, and it will only take a few more shocks to the financial system to let them break through like new shoots after a forest fire.
Destruction, regeneration and change is the healthy way to progress, in economics as much as anywhere else in life!
True, Richard it seems it is not ready yet -but that’s worrying because it means we have to wait until it’s much worse before it does which means more suffering.
We can now see in America and the UK that the major political parties are defunct- this should gradually reveal the democratic deficit and WHO actually governs us.
Marx demonstrated, as Keith points out, that there is an evolutionary process of change in societal forms, it was a great insight and we need to recognise this and use it consciously because if it remains subconscious then violence and upheaval are the result. The corporate world is too dumb to see this and are leading us there.
Here’s a free ride for you:
All public land for sale (unless you are connected to the monarchy
Cripes it sounds like The Enclosure Acts part 2.http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=ellen-rosenman-on-enclosure-acts-and-the-commons
The historical articles provided by the Branch collective provide fascinating reading of English political and social history, in particular struggles during a period of huge economic change and political struggle.
These are very good insights into the fundamental issue we still face today – lack of political or economic democracy. Despite much progress, the majority of people in this country still suffer (or the very lucky few prosper) as a result of the decisions and actions of a relatively small group of individuals supported by financial, legal and state systems they control between themselves.
The facade of democracy that has been fought for over the past few centuries, is still in need of much further development. I particularly liked the article about the Chartists struggle between the use of moral arguments (which continually fell on deaf ears by an establishment that did not want to give up any power or wealth) and physical force which would always be suppressed by superior military and police power.
The struggle for real democracy is clearly going to be a very long one!
http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=chris-r-vanden-bossche-on-chartism
That’s a coincidence! For in my post today I write that the secret to long term successful business is that age-old maxim of putting people before profits!
Hear Hear!!
To clarify, you advocate for government to monopolize education and training, then complain that government monopolizes education and training? Ha! You really can’t make up this lack of self awareness. YOU created the free rider problem and now you’re complaining about it.
The answer really is quite simple: end the government monopoly on education and training, returning it to the private sector. Then you can stop “providing” your ineffective “generic” education, leaving people to choose from the staggering variety of generic and specialized training the private sector will provide.
I advocate that the state supply general education for all. Of course I do: that is he only way that cost effectiveness in supply can be guaranteed
But to suggest that means that all education must be supplied by the state is quite absurd. I, for example, trained accountants for many years in the private sector
The world is not black and white: it is about partnership to find optimal solutions
Part of that optimal solution is private sector provision to meet private sector need. State education is for much broader purpose
Your comment suggests you have not got to that basic understanding
Is there a doctor in the house? Someone is in urgent need of a tube of gorm.
Investing in people through training and development is very like investing in infrastructure. Its something that most companies used to do as a matter of course, but as we’ve learnt, too many of todays businesses (and all of the finance sector) have little or no interest in investing in infrastructure, be it people, technology or R&D – with honourable exceptions. Neither do they want to pay the taxes so that government can invest in it. Though they complain bitterly when it is not there. Where they have taken over infrastructure such as energy and railways, they still expect government to fund their investment whilst they cream off the profits
If there is any kind kind of government monopoly on training (which as others have pointed out there is not), its because so much of the private sector has completely opted out of what should be its responsibilities.
And then you complain that government is doing too much of the training!!!
Alex
Please reconsider what you have said above.
I put it to you that all that is happening here is the transfer from one monopoly (a state one) to another (a private one). A monopoly is a monopoly right? Maybe not. But if you say you want to end monopolies then do so but do not do so by replacing one monopoly with another!! And that essentially is what happens.
How do you explain how these academies for example are growing into chains of schools which – looking at the previous trajectories of other mainly Tory ‘de-monopolisations’ – will only get bigger as investors get involved and demand more returns from ‘efficiencies of scale’? So all the schools in such chains will offer a uniform product over time because it will be efficient to do so (if you knew anything about operations management, you would know this). So much for your much vaunted idea of ‘choice’.
The concept of ‘choice’ is the Trojan horse the Tories and other neo-libs always use to manufacture consent for changes that will only enrich a few people. You should know this by now – look at our utility companies.
I prefer a State monopoly because I can vote the people who mess it up out if need be. They can be accountable through the ballot box. It’s called democracy Alex.
I’m not allowed to vote on the Boards of private companies who mess up. Plenty of top bankers and financiers still have their jobs and their profits from the disaster of 2008 which was created by them because of the finance sector’s near monopoly in producing money – as debt.
Also you fail to see (because of your neo-lib individualist zealotry perhaps) that the function of the State becoming the monopoly in this case is to wrestle away local control of schools from local councils so that the State can then decide who runs them. So the State monopoly in this case is just a phase in a transition on a journey to increased privatisation. That is why Richard and others abhor it and there is nothing hypocritical about that.
As I said: reconsider your comments.
To my mind, Michael Hudson is able to analyse modern economics in a clear and concise way and this link covers his explanation of “The Great Ponzi Scheme of the Global Economy.” Until this parasitic structure is modified there will be no real escape.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-great-ponzi-scheme-of-the-global-economy/5516780
Very sorry to sound cynical but this sounds to me as though business are just pre-justifying the highly skilled cheap labour they will get from immigration to the cost of the indigenous work force.
Hi Richard,
I’m glad you picked up on this story and agree with your deconstruction of it,
I saw the story and found myself spitting cornflakes in indignation,
I felt there was a subtext in the article that industry wanted governmental assistance in poaching suitably skilled staff, on demand, from labour markets outside the UK,
Interesting take on industrial mill history from Tony Robinson – the challenge of productivity has been a very long suffering one for workers as well as owners!
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-real-mill-with-tony-robinson/on-demand/59584-001
And, on cue, up pops flip-chart-Rick:
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/uk-employers-pillaging-europes-talent/
I started work in the IT industry in the early 70s as a graduate and over the next 15-20 years was sent on training courses covering everything from finance to marketing, project management, behaviour change, et al and even a month at business school in the US. They took it for granted that you need to keep developing people’s skills.
Since then I’ve mostly worked in management consultancy and have frequently discussed with friends and colleagues, how limited the skills are of today’s middle and senior managers who are often very poorly trained. Ironically, it’s good news for management consultants who are are called in to make up for the lack of internal skills! The exceptions are there, in companies who still see it as in their interests to keep developing their staff throughout their careers. However, in the main they expect their Human Remains department to go out and buy in skills they need and get rid of those who no longer have the skills needed.
A friend who is a director at a major business school confirmed the pattern. Today’s businesses do not want to invest in their staff with the excuses that they will only leave or that they cannot measure the financial impact. So staff leave because they feel they are not being developed. He obseverved that they see individuals taking a longer term view of their own careers and training needs, and a short term view of the companies they work for.
The idea that somehow all the skills needed for a life of work can be developed at school or university and that the problem is with state education is wilfully naive or just plain ignorant. Lack of investment in people is part of the pattern of lack of proper investment more generally in so many of today’s businesses, where short term extraction of financial value is the only goal that matters. Reliance on skilled immigrants is just another symptom of the problem. Substantial training levys on business could be part of the answer though it’s a blunt instrument and one can imagine the squeals from the usual suspects. Really it needs a fundamental change in attitude by business and their financial stakeholders. I’m not holding my breath…
Nor me
I wonder if part of this issue is the move towards everybody being ‘self-employed’ and therefore responsible for their own training and development (!) This has everyone scurrying around trying to marginally out do each other with workplaces having no collegiate identity.
“individuals taking a longer term view of their own careers and training needs, and a short term view of the companies they work for”
So very true – It’s very obvious that most companies htake a short term view towards employees a prevalence of ‘hire and fire’ mentality and yet they still expect devout loyalty from their employees … then they wonder why we don’t have paritcularly strong loyalt towards our employer.
Amazing!
I’ve had that same conversation with business folk and their HR- ’employees just aren’t loyal these days’.
I see the growth of self-employment as a pragmatic response – it happened to me and to many colleagues and it wasn’t our first choice. But when ‘permanent’ employment becomes permanently insecure, with little or no personal development or training, it becomes easier and more profitable to become self-employed ‘consultants’ and live with a different form of insecurity.
Having said that, the self-employment inflicted on unskilled or semi-skilled workers, combined with unpredictable hours, derisory pay, and other bad practices is very different to that of more experienced and educated managers moving into consultancy at quite high fee rates
The “crisis” of the British steel industry is just another example of the failure of private capitalism, state capitalism and even communist capitalism to deliver a sustainable and financially viable domestic source of raw material and employment.
I would not be surprised to see a Chinese connected mystery buyer appear after they successfully decimated the price of steel (these clever Chinese are after all the modern day robber barons having learned the lesson of capitalist history very well)
The story keeps repeating itself from the UK car industry, mining industry, ship building industry, textile industry, call centre industry, IT industry etc etc etc etc….. (privatise, outsource, offshore, close down, start again).
So we will no doubt see yet another patch to the failing system, another nail in its coffin, another poke in the eye for UK workers, another failure of economic and political vision.
And we’ll all be told it’s OK – until the day when it’s not!
Add your voice to this petition to have parliament recalled to debate the Tata steel debacle. It is starting to look like Tata is intent on closing their UK sites to remove some excess supply from the global steel markets, forcing UK workers into unemployment and closing the blast furnaces for good.
This Tory government is ideological bent on protecting “global market forces” and not upsetting their new friends in China by blocking EU legislation to curb dumping of steel below cost, at the expense of workers employment and our own national steel production.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/126128
This is what happens when successive Conservative and pseudo-Conservative (Blair and Brown) governments spend nearly 40 years treating businesess as if they were a part of government, and make them believe that it is they, and they alone, are responsible for the country’s prosperity, rather than the people who work for them (who are regarded with irritation for wanting outrageous things like decent pay and working conditions, and paid holidays).
These are the businesses who bleat about paying paltry minimum wages, and then seem aghast at the fact that no one has the money to spend on their products, so their profits go down. Then they feel compelled to lay people off to “save money”, and the whole situation entrenches. Conservatives have always, but always, confused accounting and economics, which is why they have always, but always, driven the economy into the dirt, while their supporters in the right wing press collude to dupe the public into believing in their non-existent economic competence.
These are the businesses who dodge billions in tax and then have bumptious idiots like Digby Jones defend them on TV by saying, in effect, that; “they create lots of jobs, so it’s really ok that they rip the country off and get loads of state subsidies for them and their shareholders when they mess up and need bailed out”.
Businesses need to face up to their responsibilities to their employees and to the country and, if they don’t, government must make them, and ignore their hollow threats to leave the country. Let them. There will always be people to start businesses, and not all of them will be self-serving, money grubbing, irresponsible parasites.
Great comment – I especially love the opening paragraph – so true.