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Thursday, September 28, 2006
Clinton and Blair map a path of change (FT)
Clinton and Blair map a path of change
By Philip Stephens
Published: September 28 2006 19:51 Last updated: September 28 2006 19:51
It is not often that you hear the most accomplished communicators in politics speak from the same platform. It happened this week in Manchester. Tony Blair was saying goodbye to his party. Bill Clinton, the British prime minister’s long-time friend and mentor, gave a masterclass in how there can, after all, be life after high office.
Mr Blair’s final speech as leader to the annual gathering of the Labour faithful left many in the hall wondering why they were letting him go. True, there has never been great affection between leader and party. He has always been too dismissive of its ideological icons. In recent years, the relationship has been poisoned by Iraq. But his dazzling performance at the podium reminded the audience once again just why they have been in power for the past decade. “Thank God he is going”, was the reaction of David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Gordon Brown, Mr Blair’s most likely though not yet certain successor, has his own qualities, not least a solidity that many may find a welcome contrast to some of the celebrity spin of the past few years. But the chancellor will never match Mr Blair’s charm and charisma – nor his easy skill in weaving the myriad complexities of modern life into a persuasive narrative for change.
Mr Brown’s fear must be that he will inherit the crown not by acclaim but by default. There was no shortage of fellow ministers in Manchester ready to conclude that his campaign for the leadership looks unstoppable. There were almost as many voicing doubts that he can beat Mr Cameron, the youthful Conservative leader, in a general election.
The only person who can upstage Mr Blair these days is Mr Clinton. In Manchester, the former US president was careful not to steal the prime minister’s thunder. Instead, in the guise of the visiting kindly uncle, he offered a gentle sermon on the implications for progressive politicians of globalisation. The brilliance lay not so much in the rhetorical construction, but in the simple clarity of the thinking and the deftness of touch and timing.
Mr Clinton has his flaws. In the end, his presidency was defined as much by regret at what might have been as by its achievements. But every time I listen to him, I am reminded of the petty vindictiveness of the Republicans who sought to force him from office because of a tryst with a White House intern.
It was not all schmaltz. Far from it. Messrs Clinton and Blair remain the two leaders who best understand the crucial difference between ends and means in politics. Their electoral success was built in detaching the progressive values of their parties from the outdated and mostly unpopular policies with which they had become fatally entangled.
During the 1990s, the two men redrew the old left-right boundaries by embracing effective economic management as the route to a fairer society. That meant bullying Democratic and Labour colleagues alike into abandoning old shibboleths about the size and purpose of the state as well as positioning the two parties as allies of aspiration as well as compassion.
In those days, Mr Blair dared remind his party that respect for the law was as much a progressive as a conservative value. I seem to recall that Mr Clinton’s reform of the American welfare system to get benefit recipients back to work was excoriated at the time by many in his own party. Now it is lauded for helping to pull hundreds of thousands of Americans out of poverty and dependency.
There are plenty of Democrats, and Labourites, who think the switch from big to active government was change enough. They want a rest. The insight shared by Mr Clinton and Mr Blair is that change must become a permanent feature of centre-left politics. Globalisation has rewritten the rules of the game. In the former president’s description, the choice is not between change and the status quo but between managing change and being washed away by it.
This may sound something of a platitude. But look around Europe or, for that matter, at the Democrats in the US and it has yet to be grasped. Trade protectionism in Washington, a backlash about European Union enlargement in Brussels and defence of the existing social model in Paris, speak to the same delusion: that governments can throw up the barricades against the world beyond.
Only this week we have seen the EU’s decision to admit Bulgaria and Romania raise all sorts of alarms about organised crime, migration and the rest. The assumption is that by keeping them out, the rest of Europe could avoid such threats. But the Union’s borders are porous. By some estimates, fully 90 per cent of the heroin reaching western Europe from Afghanistan comes through Kosovo. Yet Kosovo is probably a decade from membership of the club.
The most interesting part of Mr Blair’s speech covered precisely this ground. The task in the 1990s, he said, had been to prove that sound economics and social justice did not stand in opposition to each other. The challenge now was to show that openness to the opportunities of globalisation can be combined with measures to ensure security, physical and economic, against its threats.
That will not be quite as easy as either of the stars at the Manchester podium made it sound. One of the big consequences of borderless trade and capital flows, instant global communications and mass migration has been a weakening of the nation state. Paradoxically, these same forces lead individual citizens to look to national governments for protection against the new insecurities.
The challenge to centre-left governments is particularly acute. Nine years of a Labour government in Britain has called a halt to rising inequality. But only just. And all the economic pressures of globalisation are pulling in the opposite direction. None of these circles is easily squared. But, in Mr Blair’s characterisation, the bigger mistake would be retreat to the illusory comfort zone of the status quo.
There is something wistful about Mr Clinton these days. It is as if the energy he now invests in efforts to combat disease in Africa and to promote international action on climate change is in part a penance for opportunities missed. For his part, Mr Blair is in no mood for apologies – for Iraq or anything else. That may change when he joins his friend on the international lecture and, I suspect, public service circuit. Either way, I can think of no other two politicians who better describe the realities of the modern world.
philip.stephens@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
By Philip Stephens
Published: September 28 2006 19:51 Last updated: September 28 2006 19:51
It is not often that you hear the most accomplished communicators in politics speak from the same platform. It happened this week in Manchester. Tony Blair was saying goodbye to his party. Bill Clinton, the British prime minister’s long-time friend and mentor, gave a masterclass in how there can, after all, be life after high office.
Mr Blair’s final speech as leader to the annual gathering of the Labour faithful left many in the hall wondering why they were letting him go. True, there has never been great affection between leader and party. He has always been too dismissive of its ideological icons. In recent years, the relationship has been poisoned by Iraq. But his dazzling performance at the podium reminded the audience once again just why they have been in power for the past decade. “Thank God he is going”, was the reaction of David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Gordon Brown, Mr Blair’s most likely though not yet certain successor, has his own qualities, not least a solidity that many may find a welcome contrast to some of the celebrity spin of the past few years. But the chancellor will never match Mr Blair’s charm and charisma – nor his easy skill in weaving the myriad complexities of modern life into a persuasive narrative for change.
Mr Brown’s fear must be that he will inherit the crown not by acclaim but by default. There was no shortage of fellow ministers in Manchester ready to conclude that his campaign for the leadership looks unstoppable. There were almost as many voicing doubts that he can beat Mr Cameron, the youthful Conservative leader, in a general election.
The only person who can upstage Mr Blair these days is Mr Clinton. In Manchester, the former US president was careful not to steal the prime minister’s thunder. Instead, in the guise of the visiting kindly uncle, he offered a gentle sermon on the implications for progressive politicians of globalisation. The brilliance lay not so much in the rhetorical construction, but in the simple clarity of the thinking and the deftness of touch and timing.
Mr Clinton has his flaws. In the end, his presidency was defined as much by regret at what might have been as by its achievements. But every time I listen to him, I am reminded of the petty vindictiveness of the Republicans who sought to force him from office because of a tryst with a White House intern.
It was not all schmaltz. Far from it. Messrs Clinton and Blair remain the two leaders who best understand the crucial difference between ends and means in politics. Their electoral success was built in detaching the progressive values of their parties from the outdated and mostly unpopular policies with which they had become fatally entangled.
During the 1990s, the two men redrew the old left-right boundaries by embracing effective economic management as the route to a fairer society. That meant bullying Democratic and Labour colleagues alike into abandoning old shibboleths about the size and purpose of the state as well as positioning the two parties as allies of aspiration as well as compassion.
In those days, Mr Blair dared remind his party that respect for the law was as much a progressive as a conservative value. I seem to recall that Mr Clinton’s reform of the American welfare system to get benefit recipients back to work was excoriated at the time by many in his own party. Now it is lauded for helping to pull hundreds of thousands of Americans out of poverty and dependency.
There are plenty of Democrats, and Labourites, who think the switch from big to active government was change enough. They want a rest. The insight shared by Mr Clinton and Mr Blair is that change must become a permanent feature of centre-left politics. Globalisation has rewritten the rules of the game. In the former president’s description, the choice is not between change and the status quo but between managing change and being washed away by it.
This may sound something of a platitude. But look around Europe or, for that matter, at the Democrats in the US and it has yet to be grasped. Trade protectionism in Washington, a backlash about European Union enlargement in Brussels and defence of the existing social model in Paris, speak to the same delusion: that governments can throw up the barricades against the world beyond.
Only this week we have seen the EU’s decision to admit Bulgaria and Romania raise all sorts of alarms about organised crime, migration and the rest. The assumption is that by keeping them out, the rest of Europe could avoid such threats. But the Union’s borders are porous. By some estimates, fully 90 per cent of the heroin reaching western Europe from Afghanistan comes through Kosovo. Yet Kosovo is probably a decade from membership of the club.
The most interesting part of Mr Blair’s speech covered precisely this ground. The task in the 1990s, he said, had been to prove that sound economics and social justice did not stand in opposition to each other. The challenge now was to show that openness to the opportunities of globalisation can be combined with measures to ensure security, physical and economic, against its threats.
That will not be quite as easy as either of the stars at the Manchester podium made it sound. One of the big consequences of borderless trade and capital flows, instant global communications and mass migration has been a weakening of the nation state. Paradoxically, these same forces lead individual citizens to look to national governments for protection against the new insecurities.
The challenge to centre-left governments is particularly acute. Nine years of a Labour government in Britain has called a halt to rising inequality. But only just. And all the economic pressures of globalisation are pulling in the opposite direction. None of these circles is easily squared. But, in Mr Blair’s characterisation, the bigger mistake would be retreat to the illusory comfort zone of the status quo.
There is something wistful about Mr Clinton these days. It is as if the energy he now invests in efforts to combat disease in Africa and to promote international action on climate change is in part a penance for opportunities missed. For his part, Mr Blair is in no mood for apologies – for Iraq or anything else. That may change when he joins his friend on the international lecture and, I suspect, public service circuit. Either way, I can think of no other two politicians who better describe the realities of the modern world.
philip.stephens@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Full text of Tony Blair’s speech to the TUC (FT)
Published: September 12 2006 19:13 Last updated: September 12 2006 19:13
5 years ago at this time, I had to cancel my address to you because of the terrorist attack in the USA which killed thousands, and the anniversary of which was yesterday, September 11th. Before speaking to you today, I want to remember all those who died, including the many British people, repeat our sympathy and condolences for the loss of their loved ones and rededicate ourselves to complete and total opposition to terrorism anywhere, for whatever reason. I also wish to pay my respects to the British Armed Forces who since that time have fought, and in some cases sadly lost their lives, and express our thanks for their bravery, professionalism and commitment to duty.
Go back even further and you may recall, some of you, the first time I made a keynote speech at the Labour Conference in 1990, when I was Employment Spokesman. I listed the policy agenda for a labour Government. I re-read it the other day. We’ve done most of it - the big headline items like the minimum wage but also things like restoring union rights at GCHQ, things small in themselves, but massively symbolic of a changed Government.
And now we have had 3 terms of Labour Government for the first time ever in 100 years of trying. And every year I’ve come to the TUC as Prime Minister. But remember the 18 years before, when you never had sight nor sound of a Prime Minister. For 18 years, you were addressed by the Leader of the Opposition. The problem with that title is that its true to what it says on the tin: the leader opposes. The leader doesn’t do, because he has no power to do anything. However difficult it is, however fraught our relations from time to time, make no mistake: I want the TUC to carry on being addressed by a Labour PM not go back to being addressed by the Leader of the Opposition.
The key to ensuring this doesn’t lie in today’s headlines, but in the answers to tomorrow’s challenges.
I will have time to answer some questions after the speech and I know you want to talk about the NHS and other issues, but in my speech I want to talk about the real question which should dominate politics today: who has the answers to the challenge of global change?
Globalisation is so often debated today that it can just elicit a yawn. “The world is interdependent” has become a cliché.
What isn’t clichéd, however, is the response to it. For the first time, I can sense building up, here and round the world, a division, not of ideology but of attitude, as to how we deal with the consequences of globalisation.
10 years ago, the response was reasonably clear and adopted by consensus.
Yes, globalisation was at one level frightening, in its pace and reach; but the only rational response was to manage it, prepare for it and roll with it.
I don’t think there is that consensus today. There is a mindset of fear that is different and deep. People see the burgeoning economic power of China, India and the emerging economies threatening jobs and stability. But, in a sense they are fairly comfortable with it - it’s been coming a long time.
What has changed is the interplay between globalisation, immigration and terrorism. Suddenly we feel under threat: physically from this new terrorism that is coming onto our streets; culturally as new waves of migrants change our society; and economically because an open world economy is hastening the sharpness of competition. People feel they are working longer, but are less secure. They feel the rules are changing and they never voted to change them. They feel, in a word, powerless.
This is producing a pessimism that is pervasive and fearful because there seems no way through, or at least a way under our control.
So here we are: recently praised by the OECD for economic success, unemployment at record lows, employment at record highs. For all the problems there is no serious doubt the NHS and the schools are improving. No Western European country in the past few years has made more progress than Britain in tackling child poverty. And we produced the growth in business and prosperity at a time when introducing the minimum wage, statutory rights to union recognition, an end to blacklisting, full-time rights for part-time workers, and a host of other employment protection, most recently the Gangmasters’ legislation. In virtually any objective comparisons of 1997 with 2006, the present wins out over the past.
But it is the future which rightly concerns the country. And, incidentally, similar concerns would be felt in virtually any European nation or the USA.
So people are fearful. Myself and other world leaders are trying hard to get a WTO Deal by the end of the year. The benefits for global prosperity, would be much greater than the last trade round, lifting millions out of poverty. But I tell you frankly: the leaders do not have swathes of public opinion with them in this endeavour and in some countries have swathes of it, against. In respect of terrorism, there is a large part of the Western world inclined to believe the true threat is George Bush not Islamist extremism. And go to most countries and do a Focus Group and immigration will come out top of the list of anxieties. There is a debate going on which, confusingly for the politicians, often crosses traditional left/right lines and the debate is: open -v- closed. Do we embrace the challenge of more open societies or build defences against it?
In my judgement, we need an approach that is strong and not scared; that addresses people’s anxieties but does not indulge them; and above all has the right values underpinning it. The challenge won’t be overcome by policy alone; but by a powerful case made on the basis of values, most especially those that combine liberty with justice, security with tolerance and respect for others. We have to escape the tyranny of the “or” and develop the inclusive nature of the “and”.
The answer to economic globalisation is open markets and strong welfare and public service systems, particularly those like education, which equip people for change.
The answer to terrorism is measures on security and tackling its underlying causes.
The answer to concern over migration is to welcome its contribution and put a system of rules in place to control it.
Over the past few months we have witnessed both the dire conflict in Lebanon and the attempted terrorist conspiracies in the UK. At the same time there has been a raging debate about immigration from Eastern Europe and about sentiment within our Muslim communities. In one form or another, such debates have been convulsing politics in many disparate nations.
It is no surprise that people are worried: shocked by the fact that terrorists can be home-grown; shocked at death and destruction on our television screens whether from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan or Turkey; confused as to what is the right answer.
These past three days I have been in the Middle East. I’ve talked to many different people there. In media terms, there is a natural desire always to concentrate on the surface eruptions of conflict - the tragic death of so many innocent people. In an age where the picture dominates, the graphic human suffering has most impact.
But go even a little beneath the surface and the suffering is not less, but an understanding of what is really happening is so much clearer. You might have thought from the news coverage that everyone I met in Lebanon was hostile. Some were. Most, including members of the Cabinet still bearing the scars of previous assassination attempts by outside interests were desperate for our help. Why? Because they know perfectly well that the conflict in Lebanon was just a proxy for another, deeper, conflict. They know their suffering wasn’t the product of a chance event, but part of a strategy of outside powers in a bigger game.
The Palestinian leadership are passionate in their condemnation of their treatment by Israel. But don’t believe that they don’t know why the crisis in Gaza was started and who was responsible.
In Iraq and Afghanistan likewise, there is no doubt what is happening.
From the beginning America, UK and the troops of 25 other nations have been there with a full UN mandate; in Iraq with such a UN mandate for over three years. People focus again on the terrible suffering of the innocent and the loss of so many brave soldiers. But again, there is a deeper reason for the suffering; and it’s nothing to do with so-called failures of planning.
There is a war being fought there, by proxy. Afghans and Iraqis have voted for their Governments. Those attacking them are doing so to destroy those slender democratic roots. We are defending them. We should be absolutely proud of doing so. The world should be grasping the full impact of the fight and devoting its energy and resources to it. But let us again be frank: a large part of it is hesitant and even lukewarm in its support.
Meanwhile, the global Muslim community feels humiliated and angry. They feel pinned between the policy of the US, the UK and its allies on the one hand; and the extremists within, on the other. The result is that in the Lebanese conflict, many people, Muslim and non-Muslim, will rail against Israel but often with barely a mention of the deaths of innocent Israelis, admittedly fewer, but each life is a life, or the 4,000 Iranian supplied rockets fired into the north of Israel.
So: what is the way through? It is to stand strong and fight where we need to: for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan; against terrorists, home-grown or otherwise. There is no justification for this terrorism, never was and never will be. Fight it wherever it is.
But also to stand strong for the values of justice as well as democracy. Investing against global poverty in Africa is investing in our own future security. Peace in Palestine is not only just and right, it is the indispensable pre-condition for rolling back the momentum of this global terrorist movement which threatens us. The peace must be on the right terms. I have shown my support for Israel’s right to be secure and I will continue to do so. Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.
Yesterday’s announcement of a Government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet - the UN, EU, US and Russia - we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the Government, the whole Government. Then piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again.
This must go alongside a more intensive and more frank engagement with the Muslim community here. Some days ago, I met some of the younger mainstream activists within the British community. I was excited by their intelligence and determination. They don’t want to pander to this extremism but confront it. We should support them. For example, it isn’t acceptable that some Imams, who cannot even speak our language, come here to preach hatred; or that women are not allowed into certain Mosques. Where the mainstream challenges such behaviour, we will be on their side.
There is no reason therefore, to despair of this tide of extremism. It can be turned back. By strength in fighting it; and wisdom in how the fight is conducted.
The same is true of the issue of migration. I applaud your TUC statement on this issue.
It is so close to my own view that I thought of simply reading it out and letting it stand as my speech. That may be both the first and the last time I can say that of a motion to the TUC.
As you say: “If migrant workers are treated fairly and paid a decent wage, they represent no threat to the livelihoods of people who are already living and working in the UK, and... it is good for the people of Eastern Europe because it provides them with growth, better jobs and wages, and spreads and deepens European democratic values. Creating a common market means that workers must have rights as well as businesses, and there must be freedom of movement for workers as well as for capital, goods and services”.
I couldn’t agree more.
We have recently had historically high levels of economic growth at historically low levels of inflation. This is in no small part due to migrant labour. The DWP has found no evidence of a link between immigration and unemployment. And it is not true that the earnings of most UK-born workers are lower than they would have been. Migrant workers have a positive impact on the economy - increasing growth rates over the last few years by between 0.5% and 1%, and making a net contribution to the Exchequer.
You point out, again in your statement to Congress, that migrant workers have filled many stubborn vacancies, in education, health, social services, transport in the public sector and in agriculture, construction and hospitality in the private sector. They have filled labour gaps in key regions like East Anglia.
But there are real challenges. This is particularly the case in those areas, where immigration has not been a feature of life in the past. This can create short-term funding problems and unexpected pressure on local authorities. There are problems of overcrowding in private housing, homelessness and some anti-social behaviour. A small number of schools are struggling to cope with a sudden influx. There can be additional costs associated with language teaching. Primary Care Trusts in Southampton and Slough are ensuring that new migrants working come to hospital services through their GP rather than through A&E. We need therefore a thorough overhaul of how we help local authorities and public services cope with such unprecedented demands.
There is a lot we can learn from other countries about how to support integration. Canada has introduced state funded host programmes, intense language training, orientation lessons and short-term health cover. New Zealand sits migrants down through a highly interactive course of CDs and videos. Australia offers immigrants a comprehensive workbook system on Australian life and values, and is adapting the UK’s Citizenship test model.
And we do also, of course, need to be vigilant about the rights of the migrants themselves. Migrant workers will typically be less adept with the language and less aware of their rights. Pay levels below the minimum wage, unlawful deductions, low wages, long hours, poor accommodation - often contrary to the law, are completely unacceptable and must be stopped. The Polish and Lithuanian workers engaged for the daffodil season in Cornwall who did a 70 hour week and who, after all the deductions were left with just 21p.The three Polish workers living in the back of a trailer lorry on an abattoir loading bay. This is utterly barbaric and wrong. The Gangmasters’ Licensing Act must not simply be in effect, but must be enforced and vigorously.
These rules and their enforcement are not just important for migrant workers; they prevent organised gangs bringing more people in to Britain than we need or can cope with. And this is at the heart of public concerns. People want migration controlled. Now, they may also argue about more or less migration, but there is no argument that we should, by right, be able to decide that ourselves, not have it decided by forces, often global in nature, outside our control.
That is why we must have secure means, in so far as that is possible, of identifying who comes in, who goes out, and who stays in Britain. In today’s world, the old methods won’t do. 30 million people came to the UK last year. 227 million passed through our airports. The vast bulk of course do so, not just legitimately, but vitally for our economy. Overseas students are part of the life blood of our universities; tourists and visitors, an essential part of our earnings; companies come and locate here as part of global business. Put this at risk and we’re sunk.
So we need a means of identification which allows our open economy still to function.
The sophistication of document forgery means we can only be confident of people’s identities if we have their biometrics - their fingerprints, irises and digital measures of their face. By April 2008, all visas applicants will have their fingerprints taken. All visa nationals will need biometrics to get through border control. By April 2009 people here for work or study will have biometric identity cards, and biometric travel documents will be issued to refugees by the middle of 2007. The first ID cards will be issued by 2009.
Alongside this and as fast as we can, we need the electronic border system, checking in and checking out all visitors, a system which we and most other similar economies will have to develop in the years to come.
I know this answer isn’t popular, at least in some quarters. But I tell you, without secure ID, controlled migration just isn’t possible. You can have armies of inspectors, police and bureaucrats trying to track down illegals but without a proper system of ID - and biometric technology now allows this - it is a hopeless task. And as identity abuse grows - and it is a huge problem now across parts of the private as well as public sector - so the gains for consumers and companies will grow through a secure ID database.
Migration from an enlarged EU is a particular issue. There has been a big influx of Eastern Europeans and not just here but elsewhere. The evidence is they have helped and not been a burden. 97% work full-time. Only 3% of A8 migrants bring their children with them. Preliminary figures suggest up to 50% are returning home. Forget the notion that Britain is the only country affected. It is striking that Spain, Portugal, Finland, and Italy have now followed our example by opening their labour markets to new members. But the prospect of Bulgarian and Romanian accession raises its own issues and means very careful decisions will have to be taken about labour market access. Although even without it, there will be freedom of movement.
The danger with the public concern is we lose the argument over enlargement. Remember how fragile is the agreement in Europe that Turkey should be allowed membership. Yet a denial of membership even if Turkey were to meet the membership criteria, would be a seismic decision, with consequences far beyond Europe for obvious reasons.
Be clear: an enlarged Europe has been good for Europe and for Britain. Yes we have had to support it financially. We supported Ireland too and Portugal and Spain but today our trade with them far outweighs the subsidy and I believe that Irish progress in the EU has been a crucial dimension of the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
So lose the argument over enlargement and we will rue the long-term consequences.
The true answer is at the same time as enlarging Europe, to support economic development in the new states as last year’s budget deal does; and to tackle the problems that can accompany enlargement - organised crime and gangs crossing into Europe through the enlarged member states - with strong pan-European measures to combat the threat; crack down on illegal working and exploitation; and insist on full cooperation from all member states in doing so.
My point is this. There are answers. It’s just that they are new answers and ones that combine our values with hard-headed policy that realistically analyses the dangers and minimises them.
Now is the right time to debate these issues. The stakes are high.
I don’t want to live in a closed society. One that hides away in the face of terrorism or leaves others to do the dirty job of fighting it. One that sees immigrants as “swamping us”. One that concentrates on protecting a job at the expense of creating others. I want an open society with rules; one that delights in its tolerance and pursues justice not only within our borders but outside them.
Such a society has in-built confidence. It is optimistic by nature. It sees opportunities before threats; looks to potential first and anxiety second. It knows there is a price to pay but knows also that to refuse to pay it, costs us much more in the longer-term.
Protectionism in the economy; isolation in world affairs; nativism within our society; all, in the end, mean weakness in the face of challenge. If we believe in ourselves we can be strong. We can overcome the challenge of global change; better, we can relish its possibilities.
Over the coming months, we will be conducting this debate and refining policy on the basis of it. Participate in it. Organised labour has a crucial role to play. It is exactly where modern trade unionism should be. And if we can shape the debate in the right way, and obtain solutions that are fair and practical, we will do well by the country but will also show that when the politicking of the previous two weeks passes, politics, true politics can deliver the progress we all want to see.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
5 years ago at this time, I had to cancel my address to you because of the terrorist attack in the USA which killed thousands, and the anniversary of which was yesterday, September 11th. Before speaking to you today, I want to remember all those who died, including the many British people, repeat our sympathy and condolences for the loss of their loved ones and rededicate ourselves to complete and total opposition to terrorism anywhere, for whatever reason. I also wish to pay my respects to the British Armed Forces who since that time have fought, and in some cases sadly lost their lives, and express our thanks for their bravery, professionalism and commitment to duty.
Go back even further and you may recall, some of you, the first time I made a keynote speech at the Labour Conference in 1990, when I was Employment Spokesman. I listed the policy agenda for a labour Government. I re-read it the other day. We’ve done most of it - the big headline items like the minimum wage but also things like restoring union rights at GCHQ, things small in themselves, but massively symbolic of a changed Government.
And now we have had 3 terms of Labour Government for the first time ever in 100 years of trying. And every year I’ve come to the TUC as Prime Minister. But remember the 18 years before, when you never had sight nor sound of a Prime Minister. For 18 years, you were addressed by the Leader of the Opposition. The problem with that title is that its true to what it says on the tin: the leader opposes. The leader doesn’t do, because he has no power to do anything. However difficult it is, however fraught our relations from time to time, make no mistake: I want the TUC to carry on being addressed by a Labour PM not go back to being addressed by the Leader of the Opposition.
The key to ensuring this doesn’t lie in today’s headlines, but in the answers to tomorrow’s challenges.
I will have time to answer some questions after the speech and I know you want to talk about the NHS and other issues, but in my speech I want to talk about the real question which should dominate politics today: who has the answers to the challenge of global change?
Globalisation is so often debated today that it can just elicit a yawn. “The world is interdependent” has become a cliché.
What isn’t clichéd, however, is the response to it. For the first time, I can sense building up, here and round the world, a division, not of ideology but of attitude, as to how we deal with the consequences of globalisation.
10 years ago, the response was reasonably clear and adopted by consensus.
Yes, globalisation was at one level frightening, in its pace and reach; but the only rational response was to manage it, prepare for it and roll with it.
I don’t think there is that consensus today. There is a mindset of fear that is different and deep. People see the burgeoning economic power of China, India and the emerging economies threatening jobs and stability. But, in a sense they are fairly comfortable with it - it’s been coming a long time.
What has changed is the interplay between globalisation, immigration and terrorism. Suddenly we feel under threat: physically from this new terrorism that is coming onto our streets; culturally as new waves of migrants change our society; and economically because an open world economy is hastening the sharpness of competition. People feel they are working longer, but are less secure. They feel the rules are changing and they never voted to change them. They feel, in a word, powerless.
This is producing a pessimism that is pervasive and fearful because there seems no way through, or at least a way under our control.
So here we are: recently praised by the OECD for economic success, unemployment at record lows, employment at record highs. For all the problems there is no serious doubt the NHS and the schools are improving. No Western European country in the past few years has made more progress than Britain in tackling child poverty. And we produced the growth in business and prosperity at a time when introducing the minimum wage, statutory rights to union recognition, an end to blacklisting, full-time rights for part-time workers, and a host of other employment protection, most recently the Gangmasters’ legislation. In virtually any objective comparisons of 1997 with 2006, the present wins out over the past.
But it is the future which rightly concerns the country. And, incidentally, similar concerns would be felt in virtually any European nation or the USA.
So people are fearful. Myself and other world leaders are trying hard to get a WTO Deal by the end of the year. The benefits for global prosperity, would be much greater than the last trade round, lifting millions out of poverty. But I tell you frankly: the leaders do not have swathes of public opinion with them in this endeavour and in some countries have swathes of it, against. In respect of terrorism, there is a large part of the Western world inclined to believe the true threat is George Bush not Islamist extremism. And go to most countries and do a Focus Group and immigration will come out top of the list of anxieties. There is a debate going on which, confusingly for the politicians, often crosses traditional left/right lines and the debate is: open -v- closed. Do we embrace the challenge of more open societies or build defences against it?
In my judgement, we need an approach that is strong and not scared; that addresses people’s anxieties but does not indulge them; and above all has the right values underpinning it. The challenge won’t be overcome by policy alone; but by a powerful case made on the basis of values, most especially those that combine liberty with justice, security with tolerance and respect for others. We have to escape the tyranny of the “or” and develop the inclusive nature of the “and”.
The answer to economic globalisation is open markets and strong welfare and public service systems, particularly those like education, which equip people for change.
The answer to terrorism is measures on security and tackling its underlying causes.
The answer to concern over migration is to welcome its contribution and put a system of rules in place to control it.
Over the past few months we have witnessed both the dire conflict in Lebanon and the attempted terrorist conspiracies in the UK. At the same time there has been a raging debate about immigration from Eastern Europe and about sentiment within our Muslim communities. In one form or another, such debates have been convulsing politics in many disparate nations.
It is no surprise that people are worried: shocked by the fact that terrorists can be home-grown; shocked at death and destruction on our television screens whether from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan or Turkey; confused as to what is the right answer.
These past three days I have been in the Middle East. I’ve talked to many different people there. In media terms, there is a natural desire always to concentrate on the surface eruptions of conflict - the tragic death of so many innocent people. In an age where the picture dominates, the graphic human suffering has most impact.
But go even a little beneath the surface and the suffering is not less, but an understanding of what is really happening is so much clearer. You might have thought from the news coverage that everyone I met in Lebanon was hostile. Some were. Most, including members of the Cabinet still bearing the scars of previous assassination attempts by outside interests were desperate for our help. Why? Because they know perfectly well that the conflict in Lebanon was just a proxy for another, deeper, conflict. They know their suffering wasn’t the product of a chance event, but part of a strategy of outside powers in a bigger game.
The Palestinian leadership are passionate in their condemnation of their treatment by Israel. But don’t believe that they don’t know why the crisis in Gaza was started and who was responsible.
In Iraq and Afghanistan likewise, there is no doubt what is happening.
From the beginning America, UK and the troops of 25 other nations have been there with a full UN mandate; in Iraq with such a UN mandate for over three years. People focus again on the terrible suffering of the innocent and the loss of so many brave soldiers. But again, there is a deeper reason for the suffering; and it’s nothing to do with so-called failures of planning.
There is a war being fought there, by proxy. Afghans and Iraqis have voted for their Governments. Those attacking them are doing so to destroy those slender democratic roots. We are defending them. We should be absolutely proud of doing so. The world should be grasping the full impact of the fight and devoting its energy and resources to it. But let us again be frank: a large part of it is hesitant and even lukewarm in its support.
Meanwhile, the global Muslim community feels humiliated and angry. They feel pinned between the policy of the US, the UK and its allies on the one hand; and the extremists within, on the other. The result is that in the Lebanese conflict, many people, Muslim and non-Muslim, will rail against Israel but often with barely a mention of the deaths of innocent Israelis, admittedly fewer, but each life is a life, or the 4,000 Iranian supplied rockets fired into the north of Israel.
So: what is the way through? It is to stand strong and fight where we need to: for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan; against terrorists, home-grown or otherwise. There is no justification for this terrorism, never was and never will be. Fight it wherever it is.
But also to stand strong for the values of justice as well as democracy. Investing against global poverty in Africa is investing in our own future security. Peace in Palestine is not only just and right, it is the indispensable pre-condition for rolling back the momentum of this global terrorist movement which threatens us. The peace must be on the right terms. I have shown my support for Israel’s right to be secure and I will continue to do so. Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.
Yesterday’s announcement of a Government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet - the UN, EU, US and Russia - we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the Government, the whole Government. Then piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again.
This must go alongside a more intensive and more frank engagement with the Muslim community here. Some days ago, I met some of the younger mainstream activists within the British community. I was excited by their intelligence and determination. They don’t want to pander to this extremism but confront it. We should support them. For example, it isn’t acceptable that some Imams, who cannot even speak our language, come here to preach hatred; or that women are not allowed into certain Mosques. Where the mainstream challenges such behaviour, we will be on their side.
There is no reason therefore, to despair of this tide of extremism. It can be turned back. By strength in fighting it; and wisdom in how the fight is conducted.
The same is true of the issue of migration. I applaud your TUC statement on this issue.
It is so close to my own view that I thought of simply reading it out and letting it stand as my speech. That may be both the first and the last time I can say that of a motion to the TUC.
As you say: “If migrant workers are treated fairly and paid a decent wage, they represent no threat to the livelihoods of people who are already living and working in the UK, and... it is good for the people of Eastern Europe because it provides them with growth, better jobs and wages, and spreads and deepens European democratic values. Creating a common market means that workers must have rights as well as businesses, and there must be freedom of movement for workers as well as for capital, goods and services”.
I couldn’t agree more.
We have recently had historically high levels of economic growth at historically low levels of inflation. This is in no small part due to migrant labour. The DWP has found no evidence of a link between immigration and unemployment. And it is not true that the earnings of most UK-born workers are lower than they would have been. Migrant workers have a positive impact on the economy - increasing growth rates over the last few years by between 0.5% and 1%, and making a net contribution to the Exchequer.
You point out, again in your statement to Congress, that migrant workers have filled many stubborn vacancies, in education, health, social services, transport in the public sector and in agriculture, construction and hospitality in the private sector. They have filled labour gaps in key regions like East Anglia.
But there are real challenges. This is particularly the case in those areas, where immigration has not been a feature of life in the past. This can create short-term funding problems and unexpected pressure on local authorities. There are problems of overcrowding in private housing, homelessness and some anti-social behaviour. A small number of schools are struggling to cope with a sudden influx. There can be additional costs associated with language teaching. Primary Care Trusts in Southampton and Slough are ensuring that new migrants working come to hospital services through their GP rather than through A&E. We need therefore a thorough overhaul of how we help local authorities and public services cope with such unprecedented demands.
There is a lot we can learn from other countries about how to support integration. Canada has introduced state funded host programmes, intense language training, orientation lessons and short-term health cover. New Zealand sits migrants down through a highly interactive course of CDs and videos. Australia offers immigrants a comprehensive workbook system on Australian life and values, and is adapting the UK’s Citizenship test model.
And we do also, of course, need to be vigilant about the rights of the migrants themselves. Migrant workers will typically be less adept with the language and less aware of their rights. Pay levels below the minimum wage, unlawful deductions, low wages, long hours, poor accommodation - often contrary to the law, are completely unacceptable and must be stopped. The Polish and Lithuanian workers engaged for the daffodil season in Cornwall who did a 70 hour week and who, after all the deductions were left with just 21p.The three Polish workers living in the back of a trailer lorry on an abattoir loading bay. This is utterly barbaric and wrong. The Gangmasters’ Licensing Act must not simply be in effect, but must be enforced and vigorously.
These rules and their enforcement are not just important for migrant workers; they prevent organised gangs bringing more people in to Britain than we need or can cope with. And this is at the heart of public concerns. People want migration controlled. Now, they may also argue about more or less migration, but there is no argument that we should, by right, be able to decide that ourselves, not have it decided by forces, often global in nature, outside our control.
That is why we must have secure means, in so far as that is possible, of identifying who comes in, who goes out, and who stays in Britain. In today’s world, the old methods won’t do. 30 million people came to the UK last year. 227 million passed through our airports. The vast bulk of course do so, not just legitimately, but vitally for our economy. Overseas students are part of the life blood of our universities; tourists and visitors, an essential part of our earnings; companies come and locate here as part of global business. Put this at risk and we’re sunk.
So we need a means of identification which allows our open economy still to function.
The sophistication of document forgery means we can only be confident of people’s identities if we have their biometrics - their fingerprints, irises and digital measures of their face. By April 2008, all visas applicants will have their fingerprints taken. All visa nationals will need biometrics to get through border control. By April 2009 people here for work or study will have biometric identity cards, and biometric travel documents will be issued to refugees by the middle of 2007. The first ID cards will be issued by 2009.
Alongside this and as fast as we can, we need the electronic border system, checking in and checking out all visitors, a system which we and most other similar economies will have to develop in the years to come.
I know this answer isn’t popular, at least in some quarters. But I tell you, without secure ID, controlled migration just isn’t possible. You can have armies of inspectors, police and bureaucrats trying to track down illegals but without a proper system of ID - and biometric technology now allows this - it is a hopeless task. And as identity abuse grows - and it is a huge problem now across parts of the private as well as public sector - so the gains for consumers and companies will grow through a secure ID database.
Migration from an enlarged EU is a particular issue. There has been a big influx of Eastern Europeans and not just here but elsewhere. The evidence is they have helped and not been a burden. 97% work full-time. Only 3% of A8 migrants bring their children with them. Preliminary figures suggest up to 50% are returning home. Forget the notion that Britain is the only country affected. It is striking that Spain, Portugal, Finland, and Italy have now followed our example by opening their labour markets to new members. But the prospect of Bulgarian and Romanian accession raises its own issues and means very careful decisions will have to be taken about labour market access. Although even without it, there will be freedom of movement.
The danger with the public concern is we lose the argument over enlargement. Remember how fragile is the agreement in Europe that Turkey should be allowed membership. Yet a denial of membership even if Turkey were to meet the membership criteria, would be a seismic decision, with consequences far beyond Europe for obvious reasons.
Be clear: an enlarged Europe has been good for Europe and for Britain. Yes we have had to support it financially. We supported Ireland too and Portugal and Spain but today our trade with them far outweighs the subsidy and I believe that Irish progress in the EU has been a crucial dimension of the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
So lose the argument over enlargement and we will rue the long-term consequences.
The true answer is at the same time as enlarging Europe, to support economic development in the new states as last year’s budget deal does; and to tackle the problems that can accompany enlargement - organised crime and gangs crossing into Europe through the enlarged member states - with strong pan-European measures to combat the threat; crack down on illegal working and exploitation; and insist on full cooperation from all member states in doing so.
My point is this. There are answers. It’s just that they are new answers and ones that combine our values with hard-headed policy that realistically analyses the dangers and minimises them.
Now is the right time to debate these issues. The stakes are high.
I don’t want to live in a closed society. One that hides away in the face of terrorism or leaves others to do the dirty job of fighting it. One that sees immigrants as “swamping us”. One that concentrates on protecting a job at the expense of creating others. I want an open society with rules; one that delights in its tolerance and pursues justice not only within our borders but outside them.
Such a society has in-built confidence. It is optimistic by nature. It sees opportunities before threats; looks to potential first and anxiety second. It knows there is a price to pay but knows also that to refuse to pay it, costs us much more in the longer-term.
Protectionism in the economy; isolation in world affairs; nativism within our society; all, in the end, mean weakness in the face of challenge. If we believe in ourselves we can be strong. We can overcome the challenge of global change; better, we can relish its possibilities.
Over the coming months, we will be conducting this debate and refining policy on the basis of it. Participate in it. Organised labour has a crucial role to play. It is exactly where modern trade unionism should be. And if we can shape the debate in the right way, and obtain solutions that are fair and practical, we will do well by the country but will also show that when the politicking of the previous two weeks passes, politics, true politics can deliver the progress we all want to see.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Freedom or slavery (FT)
It is early morning in San Jose, California, and Elizabeth Safran, a consultant with a boutique Silicon Valley public relations company, is on her third cup of coffee and her umpteenth e-mail.
The 13-strong company is virtual: everybody works from home and relies on e-mail and instant messaging to stay in touch. Elizabeth worries about her work/life balance and thinks the pendulum has swung too far towards technology: “It makes us more productive but everybody is working all the time – weekends, evenings. It’s almost overkill.”
Over in the UK, it is late on Friday afternoon and Paul Renucci, managing director of the systems integration company, Damovo, switches off his computer. He has spent the day working at home and now it is time to pick up his children: “On Friday I work at home,” he says. “I can work pretty hard but at 5pm exactly I stop working and the weekend starts. In the past, I would have had to brave the M25 (London’s notoriously traffic jam-prone ring road) and I would be lucky to be home by seven.”
Ms Safran and Mr Renucci represent different facets of a very modern phenomenon: the capacity of the latest communications technologies such as e-mail, text, instant messaging and videoconferencing, to blur the distinction between work and leisure and to raise important questions about the nature of “flexible working” where employees have unprecedented freedom to work where and when they choose.
Thanks to devices such as the BlackBerry and the Palm Treo, “smart” mobile phones and Wi-Fi hotspots, e-mail is ubiquitous. And while enthusiasts such as Mr Renucci protest that “there is always an off button” newly developed features such as “presence”, which tell whether an individual is contactable or not, provide new tools with which employees’ activities can be monitored.
There are three issues at stake. First, does the proliferation of portable, networked devices intrude on an individual’s work and life in a burdensome, perhaps damaging, manner? Second, what is the effect of these devices on traditional workplace relationships? And third, how do individuals manage these devices without expiring beneath an avalanche of different, often incompatible systems?
It is an area that is beginning to attract serious research. Prof Lotte Bailyn of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, argues that rules and behavioural norms have yet to be established: “Nobody thinks about these issues when the technology first arrives. It’s hard to think beforehand about norms and expectations but it is much more difficult to change these once they have become established.
“Within an organisation,” she argues, “it is the top people that have to model the right behaviour. If they don’t set the right example, then it’s hopeless.”
Something of a pattern can be discerned from the numerous surveys conducted into the effect of technology on work-life balance. When the technologies are introduced, e-mail and instant messaging seem to produce measurable improvements in efficiency and job satisfaction. One survey carried out by Visto, a US e-mail company, showed that four-fifths of mobile professionals were inclined to think that mobile e-mail would “enable them to work more flexibly by balancing a hectic work environment with the demands of everyday life”.
It is a view shared by many senior executives. Roy Bedlow of Palm, the pocket computer group, claims e-mail enables him to stay in control: “Standing in a long queue to get through passport control at San Francisco airport, I was able to avoid the stress by going through all the e-mails I received during the 11-hour flight,” he said.
But as the novelty wears off, some managers convince themselves that this capability is the same as availability. A recent Microsoft survey for YouGov, the UK market researcher, concluded there was: “The need for companies and individuals to take more active control of technology usage if we are to avoid becoming a 24-hour-a-day working society.”
Nick Barley, a Microsoft executive, said: “There are lots of benefits in technology but for many that means more work, different times, the ability to be always contacted, which can be very intrusive...is this the price of modern living and do we have to accept this?”
If medium-sized UK businesses are a proxy for the rest of the business world, there is no doubt that both pressure to increase productivity and technology are forcing change. Microsoft found that “flexible working” has become a board issue for half of these companies and that only a third still claim to have a nine-to-five culture. The survey found that where flexibility had increased, so too had productivity and employee morale, coupled with lowered stress levels, absenteeism and staff turnover. It found little evidence in companies that espoused flexible working (it calls them “free range”) that managers believed employees abused flexible working arrangements.
This latter finding is contentious. Inter-Tel, the Tucson-based telecoms group, for example, carried out a survey in Europe that found four in 10 employees did not think their employers would trust them to work at home while six in 10 thought that making a request to work more flexibly would damage their career prospects.
Edward Wilding, author of Information Risk and Security argues that these concerns are well-founded. “There is a real danger that the home worker may enter into commitments, contractually binding on his employer, that are unregulated or ill-considered and that are not recorded anywhere within the corporate network.”
He goes on: “There is also the risk that the employee, uninhibited by the presence of colleagues, managers and the internal audit department may enter into collusive arrangements with others, using systems that are not and cannot be policed or monitored by his or her employer. Fraud flourishes in a control vacuum. Psychologically the bedroom, study or garden shed are far less exposed environments than the office desk.” Clear ground rules and accountability are essential for flexible working, Mr Wilding argues.
Individuals can suffer technology-related stress not only as work intrudes into their free time but from the sheer complexity of the gadgets they are expected to master. Mobile phones, for example, are increasingly suffering from “feature creep” as capabilities are added by manufacturers seeking to persuade customers to upgrade more frequently.
Avaya, the US-based telecoms group, found just over half of a group of IT workers it canvassed claimed the proliferation of mobile devices was overwhelming them, and this from a group who could be expected to have a greater understanding of these devices than the public at large!
Accenture, the consultancy, has been working on what Andy Zimmerman, a managing partner, calls “trivergence”: the relationship between a device, the data made accessible through the device and the ability to manage the device. The model for their thinking is Apple’s iPod: Apple’s engineers realised they could create a small, compact player if they put much of the intelligence and controls not in the device itself but in the personal computer.
“We thought that was a very interesting concept that could be generalised,” Mr Zimmerman said. “Increasingly, devices will have a size and capability that will make some things you would like to do with them very difficult – how many people do anything with the photos they take with their cellphones?”
He argued that tomorrow’s devices should have two controls: a few simple keys on the device and a more complete set of “soft” keys that can be displayed as a control panel on the PC screen. He said research with focus groups had confirmed that every useful device should have some form of web-based controls or “soft panel”.
Back in San Jose, Ms Safran is mellowing: “The pendulum will swing back eventually and we will learn how to adopt these technologies which keep us connected a little more effectively,” she says.
Mr Renucci also thinks time will provide the answers: “Kids today are constantly messaging each other about things that have happened to them during the day. As they get into the business community, they are going to expect to be working in those ways.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
The 13-strong company is virtual: everybody works from home and relies on e-mail and instant messaging to stay in touch. Elizabeth worries about her work/life balance and thinks the pendulum has swung too far towards technology: “It makes us more productive but everybody is working all the time – weekends, evenings. It’s almost overkill.”
Over in the UK, it is late on Friday afternoon and Paul Renucci, managing director of the systems integration company, Damovo, switches off his computer. He has spent the day working at home and now it is time to pick up his children: “On Friday I work at home,” he says. “I can work pretty hard but at 5pm exactly I stop working and the weekend starts. In the past, I would have had to brave the M25 (London’s notoriously traffic jam-prone ring road) and I would be lucky to be home by seven.”
Ms Safran and Mr Renucci represent different facets of a very modern phenomenon: the capacity of the latest communications technologies such as e-mail, text, instant messaging and videoconferencing, to blur the distinction between work and leisure and to raise important questions about the nature of “flexible working” where employees have unprecedented freedom to work where and when they choose.
Thanks to devices such as the BlackBerry and the Palm Treo, “smart” mobile phones and Wi-Fi hotspots, e-mail is ubiquitous. And while enthusiasts such as Mr Renucci protest that “there is always an off button” newly developed features such as “presence”, which tell whether an individual is contactable or not, provide new tools with which employees’ activities can be monitored.
There are three issues at stake. First, does the proliferation of portable, networked devices intrude on an individual’s work and life in a burdensome, perhaps damaging, manner? Second, what is the effect of these devices on traditional workplace relationships? And third, how do individuals manage these devices without expiring beneath an avalanche of different, often incompatible systems?
It is an area that is beginning to attract serious research. Prof Lotte Bailyn of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, argues that rules and behavioural norms have yet to be established: “Nobody thinks about these issues when the technology first arrives. It’s hard to think beforehand about norms and expectations but it is much more difficult to change these once they have become established.
“Within an organisation,” she argues, “it is the top people that have to model the right behaviour. If they don’t set the right example, then it’s hopeless.”
Something of a pattern can be discerned from the numerous surveys conducted into the effect of technology on work-life balance. When the technologies are introduced, e-mail and instant messaging seem to produce measurable improvements in efficiency and job satisfaction. One survey carried out by Visto, a US e-mail company, showed that four-fifths of mobile professionals were inclined to think that mobile e-mail would “enable them to work more flexibly by balancing a hectic work environment with the demands of everyday life”.
It is a view shared by many senior executives. Roy Bedlow of Palm, the pocket computer group, claims e-mail enables him to stay in control: “Standing in a long queue to get through passport control at San Francisco airport, I was able to avoid the stress by going through all the e-mails I received during the 11-hour flight,” he said.
But as the novelty wears off, some managers convince themselves that this capability is the same as availability. A recent Microsoft survey for YouGov, the UK market researcher, concluded there was: “The need for companies and individuals to take more active control of technology usage if we are to avoid becoming a 24-hour-a-day working society.”
Nick Barley, a Microsoft executive, said: “There are lots of benefits in technology but for many that means more work, different times, the ability to be always contacted, which can be very intrusive...is this the price of modern living and do we have to accept this?”
If medium-sized UK businesses are a proxy for the rest of the business world, there is no doubt that both pressure to increase productivity and technology are forcing change. Microsoft found that “flexible working” has become a board issue for half of these companies and that only a third still claim to have a nine-to-five culture. The survey found that where flexibility had increased, so too had productivity and employee morale, coupled with lowered stress levels, absenteeism and staff turnover. It found little evidence in companies that espoused flexible working (it calls them “free range”) that managers believed employees abused flexible working arrangements.
This latter finding is contentious. Inter-Tel, the Tucson-based telecoms group, for example, carried out a survey in Europe that found four in 10 employees did not think their employers would trust them to work at home while six in 10 thought that making a request to work more flexibly would damage their career prospects.
Edward Wilding, author of Information Risk and Security argues that these concerns are well-founded. “There is a real danger that the home worker may enter into commitments, contractually binding on his employer, that are unregulated or ill-considered and that are not recorded anywhere within the corporate network.”
He goes on: “There is also the risk that the employee, uninhibited by the presence of colleagues, managers and the internal audit department may enter into collusive arrangements with others, using systems that are not and cannot be policed or monitored by his or her employer. Fraud flourishes in a control vacuum. Psychologically the bedroom, study or garden shed are far less exposed environments than the office desk.” Clear ground rules and accountability are essential for flexible working, Mr Wilding argues.
Individuals can suffer technology-related stress not only as work intrudes into their free time but from the sheer complexity of the gadgets they are expected to master. Mobile phones, for example, are increasingly suffering from “feature creep” as capabilities are added by manufacturers seeking to persuade customers to upgrade more frequently.
Avaya, the US-based telecoms group, found just over half of a group of IT workers it canvassed claimed the proliferation of mobile devices was overwhelming them, and this from a group who could be expected to have a greater understanding of these devices than the public at large!
Accenture, the consultancy, has been working on what Andy Zimmerman, a managing partner, calls “trivergence”: the relationship between a device, the data made accessible through the device and the ability to manage the device. The model for their thinking is Apple’s iPod: Apple’s engineers realised they could create a small, compact player if they put much of the intelligence and controls not in the device itself but in the personal computer.
“We thought that was a very interesting concept that could be generalised,” Mr Zimmerman said. “Increasingly, devices will have a size and capability that will make some things you would like to do with them very difficult – how many people do anything with the photos they take with their cellphones?”
He argued that tomorrow’s devices should have two controls: a few simple keys on the device and a more complete set of “soft” keys that can be displayed as a control panel on the PC screen. He said research with focus groups had confirmed that every useful device should have some form of web-based controls or “soft panel”.
Back in San Jose, Ms Safran is mellowing: “The pendulum will swing back eventually and we will learn how to adopt these technologies which keep us connected a little more effectively,” she says.
Mr Renucci also thinks time will provide the answers: “Kids today are constantly messaging each other about things that have happened to them during the day. As they get into the business community, they are going to expect to be working in those ways.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Waking up to a laptop revolution (FT)
“We are too poor not to invest in information and communications technology.” This is how Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, explains his government’s plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on next-generation broadband networks that will bring telephony and internet to nearly every village in Ethiopia within two to three years. “ICT is the fastest way to end our isolation,” he says.
To some, the plan is just another grandiose African infrastructure project that will burn massive amounts of cash – one official said the investment would reach close to 10 per cent of Ethiopia’s annual gross domestic product – while more basic needs are neglected. In Ethiopia, nearly half the population is undernourished and only a quarter has reliable access to clean water.
But Mr Meles is adamant that the investment will bring lasting change: “The first mental block to overcome is that ICT is for the rich. Our development programmes have been among the most pro-poor. This choice is a continuation of that.” He also said that the project was self-funded and did not rely on multilateral loans.
To some, the plan is just another grandiose African infrastructure project that will burn massive amounts of cash – one official said the investment would reach close to 10 per cent of Ethiopia’s annual gross domestic product – while more basic needs are neglected. In Ethiopia, nearly half the population is undernourished and only a quarter has reliable access to clean water.
But Mr Meles is adamant that the investment will bring lasting change: “The first mental block to overcome is that ICT is for the rich. Our development programmes have been among the most pro-poor. This choice is a continuation of that.” He also said that the project was self-funded and did not rely on multilateral loans.
The priorities of Ethiopia’s investment are getting the public sector online and improving access to education.
“It became clear that the quality of education that we could provide would be sub-standard for a long time because of a lack of resources unless a short cut was found. ICT could provide that short cut,” the prime minister said.
Today, students in nearly all of the country’s 600 secondary schools watch e-learning videos broadcast over internet protocol networks to wide plasma televisions. Sometimes these schools lack mains electricity and use a petrol generator to power the system. Mr Meles said that the quality of teaching was improving dramatically as a result.
But besides educational TV and a few IP video conferences between government officials, not much else is travelling over Ethiopia’s multi-gigabit backbone network.
Mr Meles said: “We are simply building good roads and using government vehicles to test the road. The idea is to show people that it is open.” He added that he expected the Ethiopian diaspora to be the leaders in developing the applications that will fill the bandwidth. “We will do whatever it takes to get them to contribute, such as tax breaks,” he said.
Another ambitious development vision based on broadly accessible technology is the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to produce sub-$100 portable computers for the world’s poor children.
The non-profit OLPC organisation, led by MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas Negroponte, has already raised $24m to design and trial the devices. The group hopes to begin producing 1m units per month for pilot projects in seven emerging markets at the beginning of 2007.
Unlike most education initiatives, OLPC will not seek to teach children but simply provide a tool with which they create and also learn.
Mr Negroponte explained: “OLPC is not about learning something, it is about learning learning. Children make things with their laptops, they explore and communicate. When a child, even in the most remote and poorest part of a developing country, is given an electronic game, the first thing he or she will do is discard the manual. The second is use the machine. The speed with which this child will acquire the knowledge to use the device is so astonishing, you risk thinking it is genetic.”
Which is why Mr Negroponte believes that giving each child an individual computer is better than providing them through shared facilities. “Give each child a pencil and the child then uses it to draw, to write, at school, at home, for play, for study, for making music by beating it, and on and on. Likewise the laptop,” he said.
The key to the OLPC vision will be scale, which is why the group will initially make the computers available only to governments that place bulk orders of more than 1m units. The seven launch countries are expected to order up to 10m units in 2007.
With time, this will change. “After the 2007 launch, as little as eight to 10 months later, we will open this to all non-governmental organisations, countries, states within countries, right down to school districts,” said Mr Negroponte, adding that OLPC’s goal is to bring connected laptops to 500m in five years.
And Mr Negroponte’s vision goes beyond this: “I hope that in 10 years every child on the planet will be connected.”
But some development and aid experts caution against putting too much trust in technology or giving it priority.
Duncan Green, head of research at UK charity Oxfam, said: “There is a good role for IT but I am worried that people are looking for a magic bullet. There are no short cuts in development.”
Gib Bulloch, director of the Accenture Development Partnership, agreed: “It’s not about building an advanced fibre network in Ethiopia and hoping it will end poverty. Technology is an enabler but needs to come with an understanding of the applications.”
But as grand as Mr Negroponte’s laptop plan sounds, it does rest on the fundamental concept that a country’s development occurs at the individual human level. Which is why so many ICT development initiatives focus on education. Change in this manner may be subtle, often even humble, but it can also be powerful.
Hala Gidami, an educator at the Foreign Trade Training Centre in Cairo, is applying a curriculum developed by HP to teach Egyptian entrepreneurs the ICT-based business skills needed to access export markets. She said: “There is often a high resistance to technology, especially from older people. But if approached correctly, they see how it can help them. We have trained people who were not exporting before and then began to do so after the course. The results so far have been marvellous.”
In Kenya, the African Medical and Research Foundation is working with the Accenture Development Partnership to develop an 80-hour e-learning curriculum to bring 2,000 nurses quickly to diploma-level certification. Mr Bulloch said: “Up to now, there has been a real capacity constraint in nurse training. With the usual means, this project would have taken 100 years; e-learning can short circuit that down to five years.”
Many of the Navajo indigenous people also find themselves living in a sort of developing world right in the middle of the US: they face extreme poverty, the unemployment rate on the reservation runs at 50 per cent and many of them lack access to running water and electricity.
To fight this isolation, the Navajo Nation recently connected all of its community Chapter Houses and schools using a combination of broadband satellite and optical fibre. Distance learning is giving some people access to university education while silversmiths and craftspeople are now selling their products online.
Joe Shirley Jr, president of the Navajo Nation, said: “Shops at the border towns were buying our wares at a really minimal price. Now 600 of our artisans sell their crafts online via Overstock.com. They are getting good prices; they’re making a good living.”
And the internet could bring even richer rewards thanks to online gambling services. “There’s the potential to reap hundreds of millions of dollars for the Navajo Nation’s coffers,” he said.
But Mr Shirley also believes that technology can strengthen the Navajo culture.
He said: “We have our kinship, our language, our sacred land to preserve. Our clan grandmothers and medicine people are teaching the young children over the internet from Head Start education centres.
“We’re also using it to reconnect with our people in the metropolitan areas. They can continue to be a Navajo in New York City.”
Yet, despite these ICT success stories, some thinkers feel that the current discussion on technology and development is too narrow.
Jeremy Rifkin, president of Foundation on Economic Trends, the public policy group, said: “The essential technology to help the third world take off is electricity. People talk about a connected world but one third of humans have no electricity. They’re powerless in the global economy, literally.
“This needs to be coupled with environmental priorities such as clean water and access to land, at least for subsistence; everything else is secondary.”
Mr Rifkin sees the world’s dependence on fossil fuels as inherently unfair, condemning poorer countries to increasing exclusion no matter what ICT technologies the west provides them with.
“The energy regime that we set up in the last couple of hundred years is an elite system that takes huge capital investments. Some 89 countries are worse off than they were 15 years ago, largely because they can’t afford the price of oil. What we’re not paying attention to is that as energy prices go up, the marginalised are being left further behind. And we know that the price of oil is never going down again,” said Mr Rifkin.
The answer, he believes, is cheap, distributed, renewable energy. “We need to have a third industrial revolution based on renewable energy from hydrogen fuel cells,” said Mr Rifkin, who has long advised leaders in advanced economies to subsidise research into alternative energy aggressively through large-scale public-private partnerships.
“Hydro cells are an ideal energy base for the third world. They will be the real beneficiaries once these technologies get to scale. This will be the starting-off point for a decent life.”
Friday, March 17, 2006
Globalization's New Underclass (Line56)
"Inequalities of the income distribution have long been the Achilles' heel of economic growth and development; in an era of IT-enabled globalization, that seems more the case than ever"
Body Shop: shrewd sale or sell-out? (FT)
Anita Roddick opened the first Body Shop store between two Brighton funeral parlours in 1976, and built it into a global brand known for its exotic ingredients and social activism.
L’Oréal to take over Body Shop (FT)
L’Oréal is to take over Body Shop International in a deal valuing the UK chain at about £652.3m ($1.14bn), the French cosmetics group said on Friday.On Friday L’Oréal said it would develop the UK company as a standalone business with Ms Roddick remaining in her current position as consultant and taking a new role as consultant to L’Oréal on community trade.
She maintained that L’Oréal’s ownership would not change the Body Shop’s ethical values. “It’s not deemed in nature that because they’re big and huge that they’re going to diminish our DNA. It can’t be done,” she said, calling the deal “the best safe place” for the business.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Survival of the fittest but scope for co-operation, too (FT)
Capitalism is not just about ruthless and relentless competition says Sandra Dawson of the Judge Business school, University of Cambridge.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Ford Restructuring Means Opportunities for IT Vendors (Gartner)
The success of Ford Motor Company's turnaround strategy will depend heavily on the company's ability to embrace product and process innovation. IT vendors should try to become partners in Ford's ambitious restructuring.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
G.M. Reports Big Losses as Its Woes Grow (NYTimes.com)
The General Motors Corporation said today that losses in its North American automotive business topped $5 billion last year as sales of sport utility vehicles continued to fall and advertising and health expenses rose.
Calling it the "one of the most difficult years in G.M.'s history," the company, which is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing all or parts of 12 factories, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $4.8 billion and an annual shortfall for the entire company of $8.6 billion.
G.M. said its total sales and share of the North American market continued to shrink, while the expenses that it has been trying to cut with its restructuring plan remained a significant burden and in some cases increased. The decline in sales of sport utility vehicles was particularly painful, because those vehicles have until recent years been the source of large profit margins that have made up for weaknesses in other areas of G.M.'s operations.
G.M. and its cross-town rival, the Ford Motor Company, find themselves in the middle of two exceedingly powerful forces — intense competition from foreign automakers like Toyota and high labor and supplier costs. Toyota, which has lower labor and health costs, could overtake G.M. as the world's biggest automaker this year with its fleet of popular and fuel-efficient vehicles.
Since 2000, G.M., Ford and the Chrysler Corporation have cut or announced they would eliminate up to 140,000 jobs, or a third of their payrolls. Earlier this week, Ford announced that it would cut 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants over the next six years.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published today, President Bush said that G.M. and Ford executives have not asked him for federal aid and that he would not look favorably upon such a request. Mr. Bush said he would instead encourage the automakers to build "a product that's relevant."
"I would hope I wouldn't be asked to make that decision," he told The Journal.
Analysts say G.M. will face enormous challenges in the coming year, because the cuts it is making now will not provide meaningful financial relief until next year, and the new cars and trucks it has said it is working on will not hit the market for a year or two. And even then, the new vehicles may fall short against the competition.
"Our sell rating reflects the risks of successfully implementing a sweeping turnaround in a hypercompetitive market," Jon Rogers, an auto industry analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to investors, explaining his firm's view why G.M.'s stock should be avoided. "The benefits of management's plan — health care concessions and lower North American capacity — do not accrue to cash flow until 2007-2008."
Shares of G.M. were trading down $1.35, , or 5.7 percent, to $22.50 early this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.
In a conference call with analysts and investors, G.M.'s new chief financial officer, Frederick Henderson, said the company ran into a range of problems last quarter. "There are no highlights," he said. "It was a very, very tough quarter."
G.M. blamed several factors for its deep loss. First, its market share in the United States fell by 2 percentage points, leaving G.M. with only 23.6 percent of the American market. High gasoline prices meant the sold fewer S.U.V.'s, which meant its revenue per vehicle dropped. G.M.'s costs for health care and material costs, including the price it pays for steel, rose during the quarter. It also spent much more on advertising and sales, reflecting its promotion of price cuts on three-quarters of the vehicles it sells in the United States.
"The results are logical but unacceptable," Mr. Henderson said. "The losses are very, very high."
Mr. Henderson said G.M.'s plan to cut its structural costs by $7 billion a year were a "good start." But he said the automaker would be under pressure to improve the "robustness" of its results.
Wall Street agrees with that assessment, but some analysts said the company has not really shown that it is moving aggressively to achieve such an improvement. G.M. did not provide an update on its plans for its credit unit, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, nor did it comment on proposals by its largest individual investor, Kirk Kerkorian, who has said G.M. should stop paying a dividend, said Shelly Lombard, a bond analyst at Gimme Credit, a research firm.
"The fourth quarter was expected to be lousy and that's exactly what we got," she said. "The main thing that was missing from the call was any indication that the urgency has improved and the company."
G.M.'s 2005 loss of $8.6 billion, or $15.13 a share, was the company's largest since 1992, when it posted a $23.5 billion loss. That compares with a profit of $2.8 billion,, or $4.92 a share, in 2004. Revenue fell nearly $1 billion, to $192.6 billion, last year.
Calling it the "one of the most difficult years in G.M.'s history," the company, which is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing all or parts of 12 factories, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $4.8 billion and an annual shortfall for the entire company of $8.6 billion.
G.M. said its total sales and share of the North American market continued to shrink, while the expenses that it has been trying to cut with its restructuring plan remained a significant burden and in some cases increased. The decline in sales of sport utility vehicles was particularly painful, because those vehicles have until recent years been the source of large profit margins that have made up for weaknesses in other areas of G.M.'s operations.
G.M. and its cross-town rival, the Ford Motor Company, find themselves in the middle of two exceedingly powerful forces — intense competition from foreign automakers like Toyota and high labor and supplier costs. Toyota, which has lower labor and health costs, could overtake G.M. as the world's biggest automaker this year with its fleet of popular and fuel-efficient vehicles.
Since 2000, G.M., Ford and the Chrysler Corporation have cut or announced they would eliminate up to 140,000 jobs, or a third of their payrolls. Earlier this week, Ford announced that it would cut 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants over the next six years.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published today, President Bush said that G.M. and Ford executives have not asked him for federal aid and that he would not look favorably upon such a request. Mr. Bush said he would instead encourage the automakers to build "a product that's relevant."
"I would hope I wouldn't be asked to make that decision," he told The Journal.
Analysts say G.M. will face enormous challenges in the coming year, because the cuts it is making now will not provide meaningful financial relief until next year, and the new cars and trucks it has said it is working on will not hit the market for a year or two. And even then, the new vehicles may fall short against the competition.
"Our sell rating reflects the risks of successfully implementing a sweeping turnaround in a hypercompetitive market," Jon Rogers, an auto industry analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to investors, explaining his firm's view why G.M.'s stock should be avoided. "The benefits of management's plan — health care concessions and lower North American capacity — do not accrue to cash flow until 2007-2008."
Shares of G.M. were trading down $1.35, , or 5.7 percent, to $22.50 early this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.
In a conference call with analysts and investors, G.M.'s new chief financial officer, Frederick Henderson, said the company ran into a range of problems last quarter. "There are no highlights," he said. "It was a very, very tough quarter."
G.M. blamed several factors for its deep loss. First, its market share in the United States fell by 2 percentage points, leaving G.M. with only 23.6 percent of the American market. High gasoline prices meant the sold fewer S.U.V.'s, which meant its revenue per vehicle dropped. G.M.'s costs for health care and material costs, including the price it pays for steel, rose during the quarter. It also spent much more on advertising and sales, reflecting its promotion of price cuts on three-quarters of the vehicles it sells in the United States.
"The results are logical but unacceptable," Mr. Henderson said. "The losses are very, very high."
Mr. Henderson said G.M.'s plan to cut its structural costs by $7 billion a year were a "good start." But he said the automaker would be under pressure to improve the "robustness" of its results.
Wall Street agrees with that assessment, but some analysts said the company has not really shown that it is moving aggressively to achieve such an improvement. G.M. did not provide an update on its plans for its credit unit, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, nor did it comment on proposals by its largest individual investor, Kirk Kerkorian, who has said G.M. should stop paying a dividend, said Shelly Lombard, a bond analyst at Gimme Credit, a research firm.
"The fourth quarter was expected to be lousy and that's exactly what we got," she said. "The main thing that was missing from the call was any indication that the urgency has improved and the company."
G.M.'s 2005 loss of $8.6 billion, or $15.13 a share, was the company's largest since 1992, when it posted a $23.5 billion loss. That compares with a profit of $2.8 billion,, or $4.92 a share, in 2004. Revenue fell nearly $1 billion, to $192.6 billion, last year.
The company's fourth-quarter loss of $4.8 billion, or $8.45 a share, well exceeded its loss of $99 million, or 18 cents a share, in the comparable quarter of 2004. G.M.'s revenue for the quarter was modestly lower, at $51.2 billion, compared with $51.4 billion a year earlier. This was G.M.'s fifth consecutive quarterly loss and it included a $1.3 billion charge for severance, plant closures and other restructuring costs.
Monday, January 23, 2006
SAP CEO: German IT sector needs special treatment (Infoworld Netherlands)
Globalization is a good thing and it's here to stay, according to Henning Kagermann, chief executive officer of SAP AG. But that doesn't stop him from asking for special treatment for Germany's high-tech companies, to help them compete in world markets. High-tech companies need flexible working laws and lower non-wage labor costs, he said in a speech delivered at the German government-sponsored Informatikjahr IT conference earlier this week.
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
SAP CEO: German IT sector needs special treatment (InfoWorld)
Kagermann says globalization is good thing but German companies need help competing in world markets
Monday, January 02, 2006
The Future Of The Global Workplace (Forbes)
NEW YORK - global market for labor is changing in unprecedented ways. In developed markets, such as the U.S. and Western Europe, executives face a rapidly aging workforce and high labor costs. Meanwhile, executives in China, India and much of the rest of the developing world increasingly encounter want amid plenty, as a shortage of suitable candidates and the changes associated with the staggering pace of economic growth make it difficult for companies to attract--and retain--enough qualified workers.
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