THE UNION SCOURGE.
Latin Europe Pays the Price
Workers throughout the three European countries presently seized with serious economic spasms are not only overprotected but are now facing the years of lax attitudes to work that have dug deep into their economic platforms. Where the upper economies of Europe have long kept the unions and their ideological hatred of employers at bay, these, have fostered ever increasing disdain for those who sought high standards and commitment in the workplace.
The problem has been aggravated by political pandering to a work force constantly demanding more pay, more holidays and shorter work hours. The ambitious and often wasteful social exercises fraught with loose ideological schemes like the Ministry of Equality in Spain, have resulted in the sort of heavy expenditure that only vast borrowing could provide. Additionally it would seem, creating the wrong type of unproductive employment at the expense of the drained small and medium sized companies forced to close through lack of ready cash to meet eventualities. Fostering lean, productive and export compensating economy has never been much of an ideal in countries where unions are only too eager to blackmail employers into any sort of popular measure designed to please their followers. Foreign investments in employment has also gone against the grain and at the slightest opportunity often become targets of employee and union aggression.
Within the last ten years, salaries on all three countries have risen directly and indirectly in a mad rush to equal the European average despite the fact that it did not carry either heavier levels of productivity or even the sort of respect for working standards that would have rallied industrialists to create bases there. In fact, all attempts by Northern European investors to create such industrial links have met with less than eager support from the local political representatives and financial institutions. A classical statement that met an approach was "How much money have you got ?" Much of that money has gone out from many a pocket just with the initial setting up costs and backhanders, not to mention the list of technical requirements with the eagerly awaiting "professionals" ready to draw up ridiculous plans for electricians, plumbers, builders and sound proofers, just to get an opening licence. The same goes for electricity and water supply. Most locals ignore the rules and gradually weave their way through contacts to get what they want at a third of the cost. Needless to say each intervening agents in the process of allowing someone to set up a good idea, talk in telephone figures with hand outstretched for heavy advances. Many have lost fortunes in decorations and fittings to end up with no licence or even basics like electricty and water. Local landlords often let out unlicenced premises at brick stage hoping that the tenants will spend the thousands required to turn it into a sophisticated unit. They usually end up by taking it back willingly after the tenant has gone to the wall.
The major problems in Spain for example stem from the aggressive unionists and the radically nationalistic, civil servants within the Ministries of Employment and Social Security who have and still treat the small and medium sized businesses with an incredible disdain. Help lines are non existant and questions on the telephone are cut short with demands to turn up and take a place in hour long queues only to be told to fill in forms and attach the enormous amount of documents required to set the processes in motion. These steps can take up to a year and force a hapless tenenat to pay incredible rentals and overheads without as much as a guarantee that the licence will come at the end. One interviewed, unhappy hotelier whose rates had been doubled over a period of two years, made the mistake of expressing his concern about the effect of rising costs on an angry business community. The reaction from a well clad lady attending him at the municipal offices, was dramatic as she waved her fingers at him menacingly, telling him to leave or she would call the police for "threatening" the staff. This attitude is underlined in wall sign directives which tell the office workers to smile at people. This demoralizing behaviour of municipal bureaucrats, in particular, creates a "them" and an outside world situaton which is feeding a resentment reflected in the hatred born of exasperation. It is not uncommon to find people outside these offices and courts of justice, brandishing their fists and telling those round them what needs to be done with that rabble inside. Hardly the recipe for a constructive, motivated business community. In fact, the tendency is for avoidance of investment in employment and finding returns in hassle free, bricks and mortar and further feeding into the property bubble.
Stillborn Industries.
For the recently established self employed, the fears are expressed in mountains of legal statutes and penalties that turn the business of employment into a nightmare. Every single new law governing quality of environment, health and prevention of accidents, data protecion etc etc. creates a massive civil service department that attempts to feed itself from their newly found oportunities. Rampant penalties follow, with the onus on the employer to study the complicated ramifications of these needs and their forced reliance on the usual back room agencies set up to cover the concern – at a price. Instead of a gradual, free line of support from occasional inspection/tuition process, designed to engage employer understanding and support, inspections usual arise from malicious denouncements from competitors or ex employees and these result in automatic horrendous fines which are either paid or deducted from the bank accounts to which all Ministries and law courts have direct access. Curiously, most businesses managed by locals never come close to these assaults and it is clearly seen, in the restaurant and building trade particularly, the flouting of all these so called punishable requirements. It is difficult therefore to get away from the distinct impression that these tactics are of a racist nature and that workers are encouraged to drive disliked employers to the labour courts. A close look at a complete series of bureaucratic attacks of this nature on one single company, shows what seems to be a general coordinated attempt to close it down. Despite opinions to the contrary, all departments of State, discuss individual cases between each other and there is a free flow of the most intimate information with the use of the Identity Card number. Bank accounts, assets, purchasing habits, travel patterns etc.all come under scrutiny on one screen by any civil servant out to do harm. It is this that has caused a number of MEPs from different countries to question the nature of the so called "democracies" behind the scenes.
What it all means, is that despite the heroic efforts of many trying to keep their teams together, one false slip and one undermining worker can reduce the whole thing to a house of cards. In all three countries there is no genuine understanding on the part of the fiscal and union authorities of the creation of wealth and employment. The difficulties which employers have to establish a market and workable base in the early stages is of no consideration and the outlandish, insensitive interference from the cash struck local and national authorities in pursuit of fines and indirect taxes, is prevalent. Queries and concern expressed by members of the business community are not only disregarded but despite the ability to identify themselves, they are told to join the queues at their centres miles away if they want answers. Insistence results in disquieting rudeness and indirect threats.
Banking Irrelevance.
But given the union elements, the bureacratic interference and the constant new legislation demands, the total lack of banking support seals the fate of many from the start. The so called lines of credit which require personal assets and a history of tax contribution are not easily available. Bank managers work on specific documentation like tax and vat returns and are incapable as a whole, to make pesonal assessments of the validity and future prospects of the valuable businesses which are often unable to even pay their electricity bills. It is therefore not a question of a lack of entrepreneurial talent, but the empty space that surrounds it with the exposure to a non work culture that would rather be at home. It is difficult to combat its serious deleterious effects on the overall effort and short term contracts are a form of protection against the fear of the contracting of workers who start to defy management and upset clients. In fact, most small and medium sized businesses fail to reach maturity for the same reasons – lack of short term liquidity and untrainable staff. In the main the image of the idle chatting and family linked telephone stuck employees is pretty much the order of the day in the Meditteranean work culture.
This petty interference by ministerial inspectors eager to be seen to be catching employers out and the worker courts that rule in the main in favour of disruptive workers have already created an aversion response that translates in favour of staying small and taking only friends and family on board. Many have seen their life savings surrendered to unjustified huge penalties and the statutury extended employment after dismissal (and even at the end of contracts) by the legal forces. Where income does not even serve to cover basic overheads, these telephone figures can only produce one thing - bankruptcy or black market loans. It is not uncommon to see workers manipulated by trigger happy unions with placards outside once proud and contributive industries shouting hatred slogans with greater concern for monies outstanding than real concern for getting the business back on its feet. It is not difficult to see that fairly inconsequential support from Ministerial or banking sources could have kept all these businesses on their feet under a minimum of supervision. It seems likely that these are not the real concerns and that such demonstrations are no more than cheap propaganda exercices designed to reinforce the dependence of the work force on union backing. Nothing in nature of conscientious study of the structure and capabilities of the sinking, once prolific companies, exists, and disaster looms when the capacity to fire or decrease overhead costs, meet with union demands and worker judicial interference in order to keep salaries flowing. Whether or not the employers can afford to continue to pay up is of no consideration. The ultimate scenario in all cases, is closure and massive debts that ensure that the production system will never see the light of day again.
Unions Create Unemployment.
Unions have a great deal to answer for in the growing unemployment of many a country but it is in these three particularly where the fostering of wrong attitudes forces investment away. Criticising employers for not employing enough workers suggest that the issue is one of supposed duty on the part of the only one risking everything for what could be years of wait for responsive returns. These dismal and intrinsically false premises are incorporated in the educational system that throws all the burden of employment responsibility on the employer without reference to the constitutional garantees of dignified work which these governments do not allow for either in unemployment benefits or family allowances. As such therefore, public anger is skillfully deflected through the worst type of propaganda, against employers who gradually see their profits whittle away in massive social security contributions, lengthy holidays, addtional yearly extra salaries, increasingly frequent festive days and long weekend "bridges", not to mention annual holidays and lists of added costs depending on host a host of factors. An average salary of 14,000 euros pero annum costs the employer as much as 28,000 euros which is way above what a highly geared industrial country in Europe would be looking at. In short, it seems that the Unions and the fear they generate in all political parties, have managed finally to kill the goose.
If it were true that without the Union movement, workers would still be in the stone age, then a case could perhaps be made for its existance, but the reverse is the genuine reality. Market forces are based on standards and whereas low quality personnel would suffer considerably from their better equipped competitors, it is easily proven that employers are glad to pay in accordance with the demand for the specific personnel. Both clerical and manual workers have in all nations with much less militant or aggressive, so called guardians, established both work standards and remuneration of a much higher and sustainable essence. In fact it can be said that these left wing influences which prosper unduly under socialist governments, encourage labour delincuency through overprotection of the workforce and ultimately create escalating unemployment. Excessive government expenditure is usually due to the nervous response on the part of the politicians who buy their way out of unpopularity by keeping everyone happily esconced in dreams of paradise, where there is no need for great effort at the workplace. Attempts to cut down costs in these sections of the bureacracy is almost impossible as the unions strike with a vengeance with threats of paralising whole sections of necessary social support. This combination therefore of collapsing and demoralised service and industrial investment platforms and the inability of government forces to reduce public expenditure is as deadly as can be put together. This economic illness, however, becomes terminal in the face of the union movement, which clings to its inflexible, false image of worker protection and plunges whole societies into the chaotic abyss of bankruptcy and family despair.
The Dying Employment Industry.
The union movement, employment taxation and the sinister judicial apparatus which figures in the background, is undoubtedly behind the economically unstable situations which Greece, Portugal and Spain are experiencing. The deep rooted misconceptions of the nature of government and capitalist market forces, render these movements superfluous as the results of their "struggles" are particularly unimpressive. They do not create jobs, they close down and discourage industrial investments and neglect to encourage government protection of the unemployed or the family. Natural market forces in the absence of these aggressive and meaningless assaults on free enterprise, have and would continue to care for employees, reduce inflation and establish criteria for quality of life. Free markets foster standards and production levels through the discipline that determine results as can be easily seen in countries like Germany, Britain and France, In all these countries the union movements know that their days would be numbered if they went against national interests. This intelligent background role by the unions has resulted in a fair day´s work for a fair day´s pay and achieved standards of living way above those of the workers of the Latin trio in question. It is a well known fact among those well informed Europeans that none of these Latin countries offer family support of any real consequence, nor do they guarantee unemployment or social benefits of any real value. Conversely, corruption in the public sector is rife and the example set to those well below the breadline, is one of family neglect and abuse of authority. The fact that street muscles are flexing for the sort of confrontation that has historically plagued these badly managed societies, comes as no surprise.
Gabriel Belman studied political science at the University of London and went into journalism through the Gemini News Agency in London. He writes under a variety of names and presently lives in Andalucia, Spain. He is an advisor to political agents and prominent politicians throughout Europe and strives to encourage transparency in national politics. He believes that the whole concept of political life and nature of reward should revert to the original unpaid personal contribution for periods of no more than five years and during which time, the inividual representatives should have access only to basic living expenses and not involve themselves to any lucrative business activity of any type- He sees Europe as full of free loaders leading the few individual countries like Britain, France and Germany to virtual ruin. He also believes that a few of the now established members have no intention of ever becoming contributive and prepared to go elsewhere as soon as the subsidies disappear.
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