Ya gotta wonder......about cars.

John Key's new government and Cabinet is worthy of closer examination and I will get to it soon. I want to let that one settle a bit.

Today I am thinking about cars. Make that car makers. US car makers.

I remember, back in late 2003, I was standing in the paddock behind the house on a property we have since sold, thinking about cars.

My train of thought had run across and through the US invasion of Iraq and on to a falling US dollar. If past cycles held true, the Saudis and others would seek to compensate themselves for the decline in the currency their oil is valued in and oil prices would rise. Alongside this, the avalanche of war spending that would surely ensue in Iraq over a period of what could only be YEARS would see debt explode and interest rates rise leading to........a recession.

When? Unclear....but as certain to arrive as almost anything I could imagine. The signs would be there along the way.

In this context, cars came to mind. The last time the United States did this to itself, the Vietnam War era, the big US automakers made almost no provision for a possible future that involved selling smaller, more efficient cars. They suffered and the Japanese and European car makers began to eat their lunch.

Surely, this time around, mindful of past cycles, the legion of experts the major US automakers would have on tap would see to it that this contingency was covered. How could I, standing in a paddock in NZ, possibly have more insight into global economic trends than they could or would? Seemed bizarre to me that they would allow this particular process to engulf them.

I clearly recall concluding that they would. I was betting on the myopic stupidity of people I've never met and never will...based on my own knowledge and experience of US corporate culture.

Looks like I was right.

Whenever I think I'm right, I look for an alternative explanation. There is one, but it requires some faith in clever people working for US auto makers and if they really were that clever, they would be able to avoid the whole problem in the first place by being tooled up and ready to make smaller, more efficient cars....and would have been pushing for laws to push people in that direction in order to address climate change, energy independence, national security...or whatever.

It could be that running the US-based auto industry off the cliff is their way of breaking the powerful unions who ensure that US (and Canadian) auto workers have good wages and conditions. While times are good...No problem. When times get tough, the automakers let the shit hit the fan, take the inevitable bail-out....and bust the unions.

This alternative explanation accounts for all the facts BUT FOR the effect such a plan would have on the current crop of executives....who would almost certainly get the sack and have their reputations tarnished and possibly their business careers ended.

Whatever....there are some dumb people in big automaker offices in Detroit.

Employment: participation up

Economic journo, Bernard Hickey, of Interest.co.nz reports worker participation rates are up, which has pushed the unemployment rate up. More people are joining the work force or looking for work. The number of people employed rose 1% in the June quarter over the March quarter. Hickey says that is a big rise for one quarter.

I suspect the rising cost of living is pushing some who would prefer to be at home with the kids back into the work force in an effort to make ends meet. It may also be the case that in some sectors, people leaving for Australia has resulted in others being pulled back into full or part time work. I'd be one of these, having taken 18 months off to pursue personal interests before resuming paid work in July. I'm taking the place of a co-worker who left for Melbourne last Friday.

'Bright lights, big city' called and if you're tired of Auckland, there's really nowhere else to go but overseas. No government here can legislate against our remoteness.

Telecom's thrilla in Manila.

Today's NZ Herald reports that up to 1500 Customer Service jobs at Telecom may go to the Philippines after December. They have to say "may" or the current employees wouldn't feel any need at all to do a good job. Why bother?

But those jobs almost certainly already gone....unless - perhaps - the fall-out here at home is so bad that Telecom decide it isn't worth it.

Moves like Telecom's may make sense from their own point of view, but in aggregate they make little sense from New Zealand's point of view. In saving money on these jobs, they impose costs on all taxpayers and losses on all businesses who won't see sales to the people who used to work at Telecom. Millions will be sent to Manila to pay wages there - instead of here. Telecom's customers won't see improved service or cheaper phones or internet.

"While Mr Watts said the move had been beneficial to customers, Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin told the Dominion Post a recent survey showed 25 per cent of those dealing with the service rated it as poor or very poor."

Great timing, too, when many people are already finding it tough.....You send their job to the Philippines or Mexico or India where our labour laws don't apply and leave the taxpayer to pick up the local tab.

Thanks, Telecom.

What's new is old

Professor John Hosking is rightly being recognised for promoting work experience and internships for IT students.

What fascinates me is that this is regarded as a "novel approach".

One would have thought that any HR department worthy of the term would have had some sort of recruitment overlap with local tertiary institutions, but apparently this is uncommon.

My own 100% New Zealand-based IT career (and that of many of the people I worked with in IT) was characterised by the "learn on the job" training method. This was during the era when hordes were fleeing New Zealand and Sir Robert Muldoon was in his final term.

I started out as a mainframe operator in the early 1980s, doing shift work clearing printers and mounting tapes. I soon became a shift leader, then moved out to operations support. Not long after, I moved out to systems programming and then on into a technical sales support role at IBM and then on into an Asia-Pacific role with AT&T doing large-scale pre-sales custom project composition and assurance for bids to global customers. None of that went anywhere near a university. My own tertiary training had been in journalism in the late 70s and was completely unrelated. We were trained on old typewriters using 3-layer carbon copy sheets.

The point here is the normal way people have learned to do almost anything throughout human history has been "on the job".

That this should now be regarded as "novel" and recognised as valid and effective is just one more thing to giggle about when contemplating how easy it is for the blindingly obvious to be overlooked in an industry full of experts.

Hopefully there will be many more like Professor Hoskings who can re-establish training methods tried and true since we climbed out of the trees and stood up to see what was going on.

National: Slavery is freedom

If we were wondering how the National Party plans to stop young and low-skilled workers fleeing to Australia due to low wages and poor working conditions here in New Zealand, we now know more about the answer: Give MORE arbitrary, unaccountable power to employers.

Nationals is promising to allow small employers with less than 20 employees to sack anyone without cause in the first 90 days.

The policy, which will apply to businesses with fewer than 20 workers, allows employers to dismiss staff in the first three months without risking a personal grievance claim for unjustified dismissal.

While probationary periods are already allowed under existing law, proper process must be followed before the worker is dismissed.

Workers can still take a personal grievance if they feel the decision not to keep them on is unfair.

Yesterday, National deputy leader Bill English said the policy would give small businesses some insurance so they could take a risk on workers they might otherwise be reluctant to employ, such as former prisoners or people with little work experience.

The examples provided make it clear that low wage workers are being targeted. These are also the groups who already suffer from the predations of unscrupulous employers. They can already be fired more or less at will as few people will kick up a fuss over a $12 / hour job. Grievances are much more likely to be brought by employees in much higher paying jobs.

National's promised law change will effectively legalise the worst abuses of unscrupulous employers.

I can't wait to see what National plans to do next to stop workers fleeing to Australia. We already know they want to backpedal on employer contributions to Kiwisaver and get into union-busting in education and health by off-loading more to the private sector in those areas.