Free Trade and Globalization failing the working (80%?) class

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I rarely agree with anything Simon Jenkins writes in the Groaner, but he currently has an article on Trump's success with the very salient point that we should no longer be thinking in terms of left vs right. It is now more like insider/outsider, city/province, success/failure. In the UK you can add North/South to the mix.

bugslet

michaels wrote: »

Interesting that it would appear that the NMW does not apply to workers of foreign companies who are effectively working in the UK - I wonder if other industries could exploit this too?

January last year the Germans introduced a requirement that hauliers delivering/collecting in Germany had to pay the German NMW. (We had the joy of being the first UK company to go through the tortuous process:(), the French started the same in July of this year and the Austrians are adopting it next year.

Originally the Germans wanted it for any haulier transiting Germany, but decided against it.

It went to one of the European courts after it was decided it was not fair to impose minimum wage- I've not heard the result of that yet, but it's interesting that both the French and the Austrians feel it's worth doing.

The French requirements and fines are particularly onerous and in theory, we need to have an agent in France and send him/her the pay slips of each employee every time we issue one, so that nothing can be tampered with retrospectively......

michaels

Good to see our European partners continue to advance the single seamless market....not!

CLAPTON

michaels wrote: »

None the less google is your friend.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/10/25/The-Winners-and-Losers-of-Globalization-Finding-a-Path-to-Shared-Prosperity

Although I think there is also something else more recent.

an interesting quote form the world bank

" Either poor countries will become richer, or poor people will move to rich countries "
Branko Milanovic
Lead Economist, Research Department, World Bank

clearly on this forum the majority favour movement of people (well at least the movement of people from white, christian, european countries) rather than trade that makes the people of the world richer in their own countries

GreatApe

bugslet wrote: »

Can't answer the big picture, but in a re-run of previous comments. If you are an international haulier, then you've seen trade decimated by being part of the EU.

Page 2 - the rest of it's a tax change

https://www.rha.uk.net/getmedia/286caffa-ec96-4fa8-9a4d-459e86a5b50f/HMRC-imposes-changes-to-overnight-allowance-rules.pdf.aspx

The additional costs on UK firms will make them less competitive with foreign hauliers, at a time when UK market share of international work is at an all-time low (12%) and foreign hauliers’ share of the domestic market has risen by almost 50% in two years, according to official statistics from the Department for Transport.

Haulage has two main costs, fuel and pay. Fuel costs the same as any haulier fuels up at the cheapest point*, wages though are where the competition comes in and a UK haulier can't compete with the wages the East EU pays. A few years back, Willi Betz was paying his drivers £320.00 a month and £20.00 a week in Aldi vouchers at the time I was paying my drivers more than that a week.

Of course in driving down costs to the consumer it's great, but if you are a driver, you are seeing your pay suppressed and as an International UK haulier, I appear to be a dying breed.

To my mind, it's slightly different to off-shoring, when the work is being done in the UK, by a company that exists in another country with a completley different cost base.

That's more of a local example than you want, but I'm just a glorified trucker rather than a macro economist.


*Edit as I realise I'm partially wrong. If you are a domestic haulier only, then you buy fuel in the UK only, if you are a East EU, you'll have bought fuel abroad and still be running on that fuel in the UK.

I accept that sure does look like an unfair advantage especially buying the fuel elsewhere. Certainly the company should be forced to fill up the tank to the brim on exit to avoid that and time spent in the uk should be paid at least uk min wages.

However even your industry is on the cusp of narrow AI automating away 95% of the work.
A lot of companies (worth hundreds of billions not small fry) are predicting full self drive capable vehicles by 2020-2022 with tesla perhaps a leader in the industry predicting 2018. Even if they are wrong by a factor of 10 (its 10x as difficult than they think) it only takes another ~5 years for teach to get 10x as powerful.

So the robots and automation are going to do away with 95% of the jobs, be it in the UK or even in cheap countries a person costs a hell of a lot more than the $5k a computer will drive a truck 24/7 for 10 years for.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Interesting that it would appear that the NMW does not apply to workers of foreign companies who are effectively working in the UK - I wonder if other industries could exploit this too?

its probably a rare case as they dont live in the uk or have many uk costs (I assume they sleep in the HGVs). Why would the drivers accept less than min wage when there are plenty of min wage jobs and jobs paying a lot more than min wage available in the UK?

GreatApe

CLAPTON wrote: »

an interesting quote form the world bank

clearly on this forum the majority favour movement of people (well at least the movement of people from white, christian, european countries) rather than trade that makes the people of the world richer in their own countries

It would clearly be both not one or the other as the development takes 20-30 years

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

its probably a rare case as they dont live in the uk or have many uk costs (I assume they sleep in the HGVs). Why would the drivers accept less than min wage when there are plenty of min wage jobs and jobs paying a lot more than min wage available in the UK?

I was wondering if a Polish cleaning contractor could bring people employed in Poland on Polish contracts over Monday AM and back Friday PM and pay them Polish salaries?

bugslet

GreatApe wrote: »

I accept that sure does look like an unfair advantage especially buying the fuel elsewhere. Certainly the company should be forced to fill up the tank to the brim on exit to avoid that and time spent in the uk should be paid at least uk min wages.

However even your industry is on the cusp of narrow AI automating away 95% of the work.
A lot of companies (worth hundreds of billions not small fry) are predicting full self drive capable vehicles by 2020-2022 with tesla perhaps a leader in the industry predicting 2018. Even if they are wrong by a factor of 10 (its 10x as difficult than they think) it only takes another ~5 years for teach to get 10x as powerful.

So the robots and automation are going to do away with 95% of the jobs, be it in the UK or even in cheap countries a person costs a hell of a lot more than the $5k a computer will drive a truck 24/7 for 10 years for.

Absolutely, but that's in the future and not now and people vote on now. Personally whilst there may be the capability to for driverless trucks by 2020, it's going to be a while after that, but I'm not an expert on that. There's been some terrific videos from the likes of Volvo and Scania doing the rounds for a couple of years.

BTW under EU law, we can't insist that there is either a minimum amount in the fuel tanks on entry or that they fill up on the way out. A few years back the loss to the Treasury was estimated at £300 million in fuel duty, presumably it's more as the East EU share increases.

GreatApe wrote: »

its probably a rare case as they dont live in the uk or have many uk costs (I assume they sleep in the HGVs). Why would the drivers accept less than min wage when there are plenty of min wage jobs and jobs paying a lot more than min wage available in the UK?

I'd say that pretty much every East EU truck you see on our roads, will be driven by someone earning less than our minimum wage.

They may earn more here working for our minimum wage in a factory, but then their living costs would be higher. If the drivers are based abroad ( by that I mean in the UK, we are their abroad) with their own costs, then they are well paid by their own country's standards. They sleep in the cab and with modern kitchenpacks in trucks, you don't need to buy UK food. I reckon that if I was a Polish driver, I could get away with not putting my hand in my pocket in the UK if I was so inclined, except for emergencies.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

I was wondering if a Polish cleaning contractor could bring people employed in Poland on Polish contracts over Monday AM and back Friday PM and pay them Polish salaries?

why would this polish person find that a better deal than staying in the uk and doing a uk min wage job? where would they stay and who would pay? Would moving people twice a week be cost effective or even realistic (ie if it took 6 hours to go to poland after the friday shift they would be in poland by sat morning but sleep deprived so sleep that day and then on sunday they need to spend 6 hours coming to the uk wasting that day).

It does not seem to make sense to me