Brompton CEO warns of raw materials shortages hitting bike industry

Gimpl wrote:

Getting very, very tired of the continual 'it's all Brexit's fault'. Stirred up by the media all the time - remember it's little more than clickbait and yes I am most definitely pointing my finger at you Simon MacMichael.

FFS - can people not see what's going on around them or think for themselves? 

Lazy, lazy journalism backed up by lazy, ignorant readers.

If you're getting tired of people moaning about Brexit, then rather than moaning about moaning, you could highlight the early benefits of Brexit instead.

I suppose the answer is to look at each issue from different angles.

If Brexit has caused labour shortages and those labour shortages have caused rapid rises in pay then Brexit has caused rapid rises in pay.

Conversely EU membership enabled us to maintain workforces but in doing so suppressed wages.

Both effects are most evident among the lower paid.

Rich_cb wrote:

I suppose the answer is to look at each issue from different angles. If Brexit has caused labour shortages and those labour shortages have caused rapid rises in pay then Brexit has caused rapid rises in pay. Conversely EU membership enabled us to maintain workforces but in doing so suppressed wages. Both effects are most evident among the lower paid.

The lorry driver shortage seems to be a consequence of the rush to the bottom by logistics companies. Lorry drivers face a tough job with poor working conditions, so we ended up with a large influx of east european drivers as they were more desparate than other demographics. Now that the work situation has become even more onerous to the drivers (partly due to increased paperwork form Brexit, partly due to increased violence from people traffickers etc), they are deciding that the UK isn't worth the hassle.

The problem is that enticing people back into less desirable jobs will either take a lot of time or a lot of money (or both).

I'd agree but I'd add that haulage companies would not have engaged in such practices if they weren't confident they'd still be able to get drivers regardless.

The fact that the drivers came from Eastern Europe via Freedom of Movement demonstrates that EU membership can, in certain sectors, severely damage pay and conditions for workers.

Rich_cb wrote:

I'd agree but I'd add that haulage companies would not have engaged in such practices if they weren't confident they'd still be able to get drivers regardless. The fact that the drivers came from Eastern Europe via Freedom of Movement demonstrates that EU membership can, in certain sectors, severely damage pay and conditions for workers.

I think it's a general problem of capitalism that big organisations can end up squeezing the workforce until something gives. This is ultimately the free market at work and is why I think we need governments to provide some kind of protection to workers although historically it seems that most worker protections have derived from unions/strikes rather than government initiatives (often the government works to protect people with power and money rather than the opposite).

I'd say that the E.U.'s freedom of movement does enable more free market movement and thus easier access to the more desperate employees, but the root problem is having people desperate enough to put up with poor pay and conditions for so long. Splitting up geographical areas may appear to help by shrinking the employment pool, but until we deal with the disadvantaged in society, we're just moving the problems around.

What we would consider 'poor pay' in the UK would represent a very good income in many Eastern European countries. It's not that the people are desperate, it's that, relatively speaking, the pay is far far greater from their perspective.

It's therefore impossible to protect 'low skilled' workers in rich countries from increased competition whilst maintaining freedom of movement.

Rich_cb wrote:

What we would consider 'poor pay' in the UK would represent a very good income in many Eastern European countries. It's not that the people are desperate, it's that, relatively speaking, the pay is far far greater from their perspective. It's therefore impossible to protect 'low skilled' workers in rich countries from increased competition whilst maintaining freedom of movement.

Personally, I'd consider that lorry driving is a skilled profession (or at least should be) as you do require specific qualifications to do it. The simplest way to protect poorly paid workers is to increase their pay so that they become less desperate for higher paid work. Ultimately, it's a problem with greed as CEOs get rewarded for keeping employees' wages low.

That won't work while the cost of living in other countries remains substantially below that in the UK.

If you increase the wages of low paid work in the UK it becomes even more competitive as more people from low wage countries are tempted to move by the higher wages.

Once employers know that they have no problem filling their posts they'll begin lowering conditions even if they can't lower pay.

The only answer is to restrict the available pool of workers forcing employers to compete.

I agree that HGV driving is not low skilled, it's often put in that category though, hence the apostrophes.

I disagree about reducing the pool of workers - to my mind, the answer is to encourage people to move to wherever their profession is most valuable. If you allow eastern european drivers easy access to the UK, then in theory there will be extra money flowing into eastern european workers which should help their living conditions. The trick is to introduce safeguards that prevent working conditions being a race to the bottom (as naturally happens in a free market).

Ultimately, the segregation of workers into different geographical areas tends to lead to increased exploitation of the poorest (c.f. sweat-shops, factory assembly line workers especially in parts of Asia).

What would you do about the workers in rich countries who are displaced by better qualified workers from poor countries?

If you guarantee good pay and conditions then the number of applicants for jobs will obviously increase. Employers will choose the best qualified. Graduates from lower income countries will find it pays better to go and wait tables in a rich country than work in their chosen field in their home country.

The low income country suffers brain drain, the high income country suffers high unemployment amongst their low skill workers.

Sweat shops would still exist in a borderless world, they are a product of poor governance, not borders. See for example the poor conditions exposed at Boohoo's UK operations.

Rich_cb wrote:

What would you do about the workers in rich countries who are displaced by better qualified workers from poor countries?

Invest some of those riches in helping them improve their skills and qualifications?

That won't work with open borders.

You can upskill all you want, if there are no limits on immigration then, for most roles, there will always be a better qualified candidate from a low income country willing to do the job for less.

But you were talking about a situation where good pay and conditions are guaranteed, so competing on pay shouldn't be an issue.

If another country is able to turn out better qualified candidates, despite a lower income base, that suggests underfunding or unwise investment in skills and education in the higher income country.

It's not that the low income countries are producing more highly skilled workers it's just that a graduate career in a low income country may pay less than a 'low skilled' role in the UK.

If the pay and conditions are guaranteed then the employers will seek to get the best candidate possible for the job, that will inevitably lead to higher qualified workers from low income countries displacing the current workers.

The end result will be the same as if they were competing on pay.

Rich_cb wrote:

It's not that the low income countries are producing more highly skilled workers it's just that a graduate career in a low income country may pay less than a 'low skilled' role in the UK. If the pay and conditions are guaranteed then the employers will seek to get the best candidate possible for the job, that will inevitably lead to higher qualified workers from low income countries displacing the current workers. The end result will be the same as if they were competing on pay.

why is a graduate from another country the best candidate for a low skilled job? presumably "waiting tables" benefits from someone speaking the local language without a strng accent, rather than froma graduate who may feel they would like a job more relevant to their qualifications, which challenges them in a different way.

They're likely to have better literacy and numeracy skills for starters.

I don't think an accent is that big a barrier.

If you offered most graduates triple their salary to wait tables I'm sure you'd get plenty of interest.

I agree about poor governance - greedy capitalists are going to exploit wherever they can.

Ideally, displaced workers should be able to retrain for better opportunities, but that relies on having a decent social care system. Personally, I like the idea of universal income. I think that ultimately, the most effective way to enable people to make the most of their abilities is to allow them to do what they want and where they want - it just seems to be a waste to force people to live in areas where they have few prospects and are trapped by poverty. Of course, if we even out the money distribution, then maybe we'd have less billionaires going into space.

Open borders sound great on paper but in reality it would be an absolute mess.

You couldn't have an NHS with open borders.

You couldn't have universal income with open borders. (With borders it might just work).

People living in the UK are some of the wealthiest people on the planet, most of us are firmly in the top 1% globally.

If we even out money distribution we're all going to have to get a whole lot poorer.

It's all a question of degree. We currently have open borders between cities, counties and even countries within the UK and yes, that produces problems with unequal distribution of money and opportunities.

I think that at some point we need to stop thinking in terms of small geographical regions and instead think globally. It's becoming clear that global initiatives are needed to address climate catastrophes and it's no good just having the richest people move to the less affected areas whilst huge swathes of poorer people lose their homes and livelihoods. Similarly, we need to be prepared for greater numbers of climate refugees, so at some point we have to decide between surviving together or just letting the disadvantaged suffer.

I'm a fan of Buckminster Fuller and his spaceship Earth philosophies, though I appreciate that a lot of changes are going to be needed.

This is when it gets a bit 'Realpolitik'.

Those of us who live in the UK or other parts of the rich world benefit massively from global inequality.

We live lives of great comfort compared to many of our fellow humans, reducing inequality globally would require us to give up a lot of those comforts.

I'm not sure many people are willing to make the necessary sacrifices even if they acknowledge the worthiness of the goal.

Since the 1980s we've had the capacity to feed, clothe, house and educate everyone on Earth. I'm pretty sure that once we get the billionaires up against the wall, we wouldn't need to have a massive change in our comfort levels.

Richard Buckminster Fuller wrote:

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

If you took every penny from every billionaire on the planet you'd have about £900 each for everyone else.

That's not going to do a whole lot of feeding, clothing, housing and educating.

It's easy to blame billionaires but on a global scale the average person in the rich world is insanely wealthy.

In the rich world we are all the 1%. If you want global equality then it'll be you, me and everyone we know "up against the wall".

From some random googling, I think that if we equalised everyone's wealth it works out at something like £25,000 per person.

Maybe if we equalised everybody's wealth, that's not just the billionaires.

Given that the median salary in the UK (one of the richest countries in the world) is £30k I'm a bit sceptical about that £25k figure tbh but even if it were accurate you'd still be asking a lot of people to take a significant pay cut.

That's just a rough ballpark value of wealth rather than necessarily being salary related.

Ultimately, if we want to sensibly approach post-scarcity societies then there's going to be a lot of upset people, but also a much greater number of much happier people.

All of these figures around equalisation of wealth are a bit meaningless anyway (except as an illustration of current inequality), because money isn't a finite resource. It isn't a resource at all - it's a social construct. If wealth was equalised across the world, it would have vast impacts on the value of money, and the relative cost of goods and services, so having £25k wouldn't mean the same as it does to have £25k today.

Absolutely. It's not a zero-sum game anyway, as you'd expect world productivity to increase if resources were better allocated.

Reducing the average person in the UK to just £25k total wealth is a pretty savage cut.

Very few of us would even be left with a house.

As Mdavidford points out a lot of 'wealth' is pretty ethereal. You can't eat an Amazon share or one square foot of prime real estate so not sure how we'd decide who gets what.