If you see how Hermes Group, an Otto owned logistics company, (sub-)subcontractors have to handle their daily work load at (often below) minimum wage pay, often with their private cars, it's hard to believe he's that serious about running a morally superior business for any other reason than getting good PR.
DHL is not golden either but Hermes is just bad in every aspect. As a private customer in Germany I would try to avoid getting stuff shipped to me through Hermes by all means possible, since you never know who delivers your stuff (high fluctuation of sub-sub contractors) the delivery experience ranges from unacceptable to slightly above sub-par.
I agree. I think, today's Otto Group is not morally superior to Amazon's business at all, at least judged by their Hermes business. At least, I can not see any viable differences.
What totally pisses me off is, the aura of "charity" that Otto is surrounding around himself. He also got a high German medal (the so called "Große Verdienstkreuz mit Stern") for his charities. With examples like these, German high medals become the same value as the "Nobel Peace Prize" that is given to some of the worst persons that have lived.
I now understand, why some people strictly refuse to be dishonored by such prizes.
It's right there with the "trickle-down" myth. The whole idea that that CSR[1] somehow frees companies from paying their share in social taxes and exempts them from regulations[2]; that the government controlled social sector and welfare could be privatized (at least in Germany there's something left) and social taxes and regulations could be replaced by voluntary CSR measures. It might work for a few PR-exploitable areas, but not everything yields a ROI high enough to please the investors.
If a company want's to do something good they should show it first through their products, trough the resources they are made with and how well they treat their employees.[3]
I do not know, who ever came up with the idea, that voluntary CSR could replace social taxes and regulations, but in my opinion, that is nothing else as neo-capitalistic bullshit, again!
Those that believe in it should go to the worst areas of England and into the slums of the US and see what the results are. England once was one of the wealthiest and best to live in countries of the world. Now, after Thatcher, it is just a hollow carcass, cankered by neo-capitalism. What is left is the reign of the bankers, leaving some tips on the desk for the underdogs.
Thatcher was highly regarded as role model how profitable it is to go for more privatization. But the result is, that today the UK is in worse state as it was before Thatcher.
It was profitable of course! But not for the 99% of the people.
I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but the UK economy in the 1970's was a complete disaster - much, much worse than it is today.
For example a combination of very high inflation (above 15% pa for the 4 years between 1974 and 1977[1]) combined with huge strikes by unions led to incidents like the "three day week"[2] (where the conservative UK government rationed electricity to businesses: they could only use it 3 days per week) and the "Winter of Discontent"[3] (where the Labour government failed to reach a wage control agreement with unions, leading to more strikes and the Thatcher government).
Official unemployment figures throughout the 1970's look much better than today (eg, 5-6% unemployment rather than ~7.5% now), but that doesn't take into account the fact that many were not being paid because of strike action, and also that the high inflation meant people were chronically underpaid (hence the strikes).
It's not at all clear to me that it was Thatcher's amazing economic policies that turned the economy around rather than the boom years of North Sea oil.
Even if Thatcher's policies did stimulate the economy at the time, from where we're sitting now, what is clear is that that stimulus was not sustainable, and that all that privatisation and the Big Bang did was borrow from the future to splash the cash in the then-present.
That is exactly what I wanted to point out. Oftentimes such privatization is buying short time benefits from the future. In my opinion, Britain has sold to much of its assets and is carrying a huge burden today.
Saying that without also acknowledging the problems of the 1970's is just as bad as saying "the 1980's were great for Britain - look how profitable companies became".
Many things Thatcher did were terrible, but at the same time (for example) it's difficult to argue that a national government should be in the business of running road transport for the country[1]. There's a reasonable argument that some utilities work best in state ownership in some cases, but many of the other things that were run by the government prior to Thatcher were complete disasters.
I also don't want to say that everything was good before Thatcher or that a socialistic approach is always better or even good. But what I wanted to say, that many of the long term results of Thatcherism are hurting the country till today, even when it was brought out of economic decline.
I think, that neither socialism nor pure thinking that capitalism and market will "just make it all right" work in the long run.
The results of "market makes it alright" are visible in the sweat shops of the 3rd world countries. In the western countries we have a long tradition of market regulation and that is our luck -- but it seems we are running out of luck.
That was my recollection, but looking at plots of real GDP per capita and debt/GDP, I'm not seeing any substantive changes associated with the Thatcher years. Is there any metric where it pops?
It looks like under Thatcher got inflation under control, unemployment rose, then fell (similar to the US during the same time period) and the economy had a run of growth from '81 to '90 that peaked near 5%.
Not too shabby when you look at the 10 years prior when inflation was 25% and the economy shrank from '74-76.
Britain was regarded as a "sick man of Europe" before Thatcher took office.
1970-1979, unemployment was mostly below 5%. It was about 7% after it "fell" post-Thatcher, when it started rising again in 1991. It then fell again, finally getting back to pre-Thatcher levels only sometime post 2000 - where it stayed until the 2009 crash.
"[T]he economy had a run of growth from '81 to '90 that peaked near 5%.
"Not too shabby when you look at the 10 years prior when inflation was 25% and the economy shrank from '74-76."
That's pretty cherrypicky. Let's get a slightly broader view:
The economy shrank from '74-'76; it also shrank '79-'81 and '90-'91. The years '71-'80 peaked in '73 at over 7% growth (for which the '74-'76 slump may well have been a correction). I'm not sure I'd call it shabby, but I'm not sure it's great, especially with the high unemployment rate.
'Britain was regarded as a "sick man of Europe" before Thatcher took office.'
I'm aware of the perception, and the shifts therein. I was curious as to the accuracy of it.
I don't think, that such figures as economic growth and inflation rate are the only and best methods to evaluate the results of a specific politic.
What is the impact on the people and the state in general? Which factors are also important in this time.
The thing is, that economic bad times change with better times -- even with no change at all in politics. To consider every time a success of the leading party is often times just statistical brainwashing.
The Germans also had a bigger raise in economy with the opposite politics.
Also look how the long term results are, since the Thatcherian politics are still followed by the successors. The privatization of many areas like railway and water services resulted in worse quality of service. Also the UK today has nearly killed of all its industry base. Instead they have only left their banks, so they are largely susceptible now to blackmail of this sector, that is the reason why the banking sector can not be reorganized in Europe, since it is blocked by the veto of the British.
What is left is a poor leftover of capitalism.
Of course it is white-washed by statistical figures that always skip the negatives, since the advocates of unregulated capitalism want to prove their point.
Henry Kissenger, for one, was a straight-up war criminal. “Worst persons who have lived” doesn’t have a very precise definition though, so I’ll pass on judging that one.
Perhaps not in the "worst person that have lived" category; but many have said Obama was awarded the prize almost entirely on the merit of campaign promises he has since failed to enact.
All of the leaders of countries involved in any kind of war during their ruling would certainly meet the criteria. If Yaser Arafat and Barack Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, I guess now it's time for Vladimir Putin to make the list complete?
Really? That's all the criteria for "worst persons to have ever lived"? That's a pretty low bar and seems like it would qualify pretty much every head of state ever.
In contrast, I know a couple of people that work for Otto directly (i.e. not for Otto owned companies like Hermes or MyToys) and their work environments are fantastic. I also have friends in other big companies like Unilever, Mondelēz (former Kraft), and more, and based on what I am told, Otto offers the best working conditions.
Logistics companies are currently in a hard and cut throat market, and the only place where you can order and be kinda assured that the workers working conditions are o.k. is, I think, Deutsche Post. Doesn't make it right, but as explained above, some of Otto's other endeavours do indeed excel with very good working conditions.
The working conditions of Deutsche Post are changing too. The base personal still is fairing very well, I think, but the parcel department DHL is more and more also working with sub-contractors. A similar model as Hermes is doing. But it must be said, that Hermes was one of those that started this race. So, it is legitimate I think to say, that DHL reacted on the move of Hermes, since the big companies are demanding the lowest prices and Hermes of course is ahead with its model against a Deutsche Post with guaranteed jobs, relatively high salaries and high costs for pensions.
Fully agree with you. Every time I see a Hermes notice on my door I have immediate nightmares where the package might have landed.
A few weeks ago, after asking Hermes to deliver the package to a local Hermes station, it took a lot of discussion with the guy there trying to convince him to go through the packages. With him stating it wasn't delivered, while Hermes confirmed me it was there.
To put it shortly, the package was there and this is a common occurrence with Hermes deliveries.
If you can control which company is handling your deliveries, never ever use Hermes besides sending stuff back to Amazon.
This is true of a lot of firms. Large companies like to be pillars of the business community, but push their problems to their suppliers. It's not just Otto.
The other challenge is it's hard to change a paternalistic culture where "Dad" is looking out for everyone. It's hard to make change happen, and hard to get people to double down during a crisis. The lethargy at these cultures is palpable.
That is right. It seems to me a large trend today, to install this "chain of irresponsibility" in many companies. Because they can save some money and say it is not their fault, when somebody criticizes.
But since it seems to me, that Hermes was one of the first in the Germany based parcel delivery businesses to use this concept, they have no excuse. What kind of excuse is it anyway to say "the others are doing it too!". Tell that in a courtroom after a murder!
It is the same game, btw. that western companies play in 3rd world companies. They do not open the sweat shops themselves, but work with contractors or sub-contractors or even sub-sub-contractors. And when a sweat shop burns down, to many workers kill themselves (all things that already happen(ed)) or something else happens -- they know about nothing and are horrified by the "bad behavior" of their contractor that they would "never imagine"!
Hermes Logistics is but ONE of Otto Group's +100 companies. HL isn't even a mainstay of the OG portfolio as they were only purchased a few years ago. Judge not, the whole bushel because of one bad apple.
Yes. It's always funny to see people clamour to minimum wages. Eg they express costs in terms of multiples of minimum wage. Or celebrate raising the minimum wage.
Hong Kong recently raised the minimum wage from 0 to a couple of dollars. (Ie introduced a new one.) Poor People didn't suddenly earn more money.
DHL is not golden either but Hermes is just bad in every aspect. As a private customer in Germany I would try to avoid getting stuff shipped to me through Hermes by all means possible, since you never know who delivers your stuff (high fluctuation of sub-sub contractors) the delivery experience ranges from unacceptable to slightly above sub-par.
http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/ard-film-ueber-lohndumping-d... [German]
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=ht... [Google translate]