Every single one of the Europeans or South Africans?
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Retrenchments on the increase?
- Thread starter Moederloos
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- economy inflation jobs retrenchment
Every single one of the Europeans or South Africans?
People have to be willing to use the labour laws against these companies or use other means to attack them from the inside. Admittedly this may require being willing to be totally ruthless. What companies know is that most employees can't be bothered to fight back and enforce their rights. Basically everyone should be unionised.
Correct, and even if you don't belong to a union, companies will always hope and try bull tactics to make sure that the employees:
1) shut their mouths
2) never complain
3) work overtime for free
Didn't you know, Europeans don't borrow money, buy TVs or nice cars. They all live off the land and make fires by banging rocks together.
Many Europeans painstakingly save up until they can buy what they want.
I can understand if this simple concept is difficult to grasp for some South Africans.
Saving? What is that? It takes time? OHNOZ, in that time the Jones' already got that new Beemer before me! OHNOZ!
And even for those Europeans that do accrue debt, it is not such a big problem as in SA, since interest rates in most European countries are single-digit figures
Turiko
Banned
Ja and on Friday I leart that they've lost over 60% of their workforce and it looks like they'll be out of the picture this time next year. I am now working for a direct competitor. The wheel turns....
Yes, when you complain, that's asking for kuk.... One place I worked for even tried to shove me into Scientology when I complained about a co-worker.
The work overtime for free thing is very common.... I am now getting my wife to fight back on that issue, we've been met with some success now that we've told them we're going to the CCMA.
I try to be reasonable and fair, but if a company thinks they can take advantage of me I do not hesitate to get the CCMA involved.
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Many Europeans painstakingly save up until they can buy what they want.
I can understand if this simple concept is difficult to grasp for some South Africans.
Saving? What is that? It takes time? OHNOZ, in that time the Jones' already got that new Beemer before me! OHNOZ!
Europeans also lack the obsession we have with owning a fancy car (OK, they have public transport), there is also no stigma to buying a small car or 'gay' little scooter even for men, they are also happy to ride around on bikes in large numbers even though their weather sucks ass compared to ours, and they don't seem to be as generally horrified by the idea of living in a very small place.
Turiko
Banned
They also lack the obsession of having to be mall rats
sand_man
Honorary Master
True, and I think it also has something to do with the fact that in Europe, no-one cares if you drive a fancy car. You can drive the latest black SLK down the street and no-one will blink an eye or turn a head. In SA, it's totally the opposite.
Isn't that national debt? Is that really a valid reflection of personal borrowing and corporate borrowing? It also doesn't reflect private and corporate savings rates. Per capita is also not all that meaningful, as the mere existence of a large population of poor people would dramatically drop the figure even if those people have only a tiny involvement in one's economy. Wouldn't it be more meaningful to view that as a percentage of GDP? Or even against GDP per capita? It also doesn't say much about ability to service debt. I'm not sure that figure is very meaningful. (I'm trying to view the original nationmaster page to see what it's supposed to be, seems like "external debt", but I get a 404, even if I go via nationmaster's own page :/)
According to Wikipedia, "External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. The debtors can be the government, corporations or private households. The debt includes money owed to private commercial banks, other governments, or international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank." ... I suppose that means that if someone in a small country like Belgium borrows money from, say, a Netherlands bank (this is common), it will be included as part of the "external debt", while if, say, someone in Cape Town borrows from a bank headquartered in Joburg, it will not be included as "external debt" (or even between states in the US - predictably the figure is low there). This is arbitrary. It then seems logical that external debt per capita would tend to be higher for small countries that are nearby countries with bigger banks (e.g. Ireland, Belgium) - and not terribly meaningful, since there is no reason to suspect a Belgian repaying (say) a home loan to a Netherlands bank (or an Irishman to a London bank) is less likely to be able to repay that loan than a local. This figure thus doesn't reflect lending rates at all, especially not comparatively. It also only looks at absolute debt size per capita, which is wrong, since people in rich countries are inherently going to be borrowing higher absolute sums, since they do much more with it and their property prices and labour rates etc. are higher and so on. So actually your figures are completely meaningless in this context, if you were trying to 'prove' that Europeans are bigger borrowers.
Some of those countries that 'look bad' there look much better than us on savings: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_adj_sav_net_nat_sav_of_gni-adjusted-savings-net-national-gni ... and they look much better here, where we don't look so good: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_lon_deb_dod_cur_us-term-debt-dod-current-us ... likewise here: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_pre_val_of_deb_of_gni-economy-present-value-debt-gni
Nice cherrypick though.
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Indeed, I don't understand why so many seem to put up with it. Are they afraid they'll be fired? (The people I know who put up with it are generally unlikely to get fired, they just seem to lack backbone ... but that's a small sample.)
Moederloos
Honorary Master
Turiko
Banned
Same old same old.... they get rid of the staff in hard times but will never take a knock themselves. Gotta keep that pocket lining to within 2mm eh?
For amusement I pointed friends who really do live in Europe to some of the claims made by he shall remain nameless. First question was "Has this person ever actually been Europe?"
I don't get it either. But I think many people don't realise they're protected and companies do like to lie to their staff regarding the legal requirement to pay for overtime.
Yes, but to see what this says about Europe vs. SA, we should do a comparison:
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=132140
"Household debt levels are at record levels - 77,6 percent of disposable income in Q4 2007"
So what Europeans are calling "soaring" household debt, is still lower than the household debt of South Africans. They seem to be *alarmed* to be reaching rates that are lower than what we seem to be entirely un-alarmed by and many are defending as normal and good.
*Edit* Hmm .. seem to have found this table, two columns are 1995 and 2005:
Denmark 112.9 155.2
Netherlands 63.4 134.1
Portugal 49.8 112.6
US 78.8 111.1
Spain 47.4 93.5
Germany 74.3 83.2
Sweden 54.7 78.3
France 47.8 65.2
Finland 47.2 58.6
Belgium 45.7 54.2
Greece 8.6 44.9
Italy 24.6 43.1
A lot of this seems to be due to the rise in property prices. Not sure what effect the bubble portion popping would be having by now.
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