Minimum force being used.....the more things change the more they stay the same...

[adrianh]

The USA is bringing manufacturing back on shore after the economic crises. The manufacturing jobs however demand higher skills from workers than before. A number of manufacturing jobs have been replaced by robots e.g. automated welding etc. The robots can do those jobs better than humans, but now they require people to manufacture the robots and to service them.

The days of cheap, illiterate manual labour may be gone. We need a better educated workforce that is trainable so that productivity can be increased. Once productivity increase, your income increases exponentially and wealth is created on a broader base.

This is not all true. What happens is that robots do the detailed critical work and the humans have to do the mindless work. Look at many factories, there are hundereds of people sitting at stations mindlessly assembling stuff. Robots are not used to do every single thing. Partial assembly and packaging is still done by hand. The problem is that a person needs to behighly skilled or has to be able to sit all day long and perform a mindless task. The problem is that the people who end up doing the mindless tasks (and it has to be done by lots and lots of hands, there is just no way around it) demand as much money as the highly skilled employees.

What people need to understand is that there is simply not enough work for also the people, be it skilled or mindless. What people also need to realize is that if everybody are highly skilled then the mindless work doesn't get done. Somebody still has to seal the box and put it on the truck. The answer does not lie in training everybody to be skilled, the answer lies in training people to take responsibility for their own wellbeing.

They need to learn that work is an artform. It might sound strange when I use the word 'artform' but that is the way I see it, a person could just do a job or they could do the job with the style derived from inner pride. I love doing what i do, be it fitting a light or digging in the garden, we express our souls through the craft of our hands and minds. Teach people to understand this and we might get somewhere.

[Dave A]

The Chinese industrial areas also use a very high percentage of migrant workers but they seem to have it waxed.

I suspect expectations are relatively low and companies in China don't have to navigate our LRA.

[Blurock]

The difference between the Chinese workforce and ours is work ethic and education. It is easier to train someone when there is no language and cultural barriers. The illiteracy of the majority of our workforce is a major stumbling block.

We are not talking of highly skilled workers, we are talking about people who can understand instructions. The demand for unskilled labour is waning and is a burden that we unfortunately still have to bear in an effort to create jobs and address social and political problems.

[Blurock]

The Chinese industrial areas also use a very high percentage of migrant workers but they seem to have it waxed.

The Chinese also use a hostel system provided by the employer. They also do not have the tribal, cultural and language problems that we have.

[Nigel Hamilton]

isn't this now an interesting perspective!!

http://www.marikana-truth.com/

[Blurock]

...and this may well be true!

It is common practice in black management circles that you owe me a % of your salary if I get you a job. There are municipalities and other parastatals where secretaries earn upwards of R20k per month, but less than half will reach them, as their managers syphon off their share before the employee is paid.

[Nickolai Naydenov]

isn't this now an interesting perspective!!

http://www.marikana-truth.com/

I don't know so much, I watched Interface few weeks back and they confirmed that their salaries with housing, benefits etc is 10 500 or 11 500 I don't remember, so this seems to me like is a bit far fetched, besides the two unions are the ones that have interest in this matter, in fact there's a war between those two unions

[tec0]

...and this may well be true!

It is common practice in black management circles that you owe me a % of your salary if I get you a job. There are municipalities and other parastatals where secretaries earn upwards of R20k per month, but less than half will reach them, as their managers syphon off their share before the employee is paid.

The modern face of this strategy is labour broking all they did was to make it legal.

And as we all know something this strange can only become legal if TAX is paid on it...

[Dave A]

Let's try to whittle out what's bullsh*t from what's not. The great thing about public companies is they have to disclose all sorts of information. So:

Based on the mandatory transactions with connected parties disclosure, Cyril's been doing rather well. Nothing there about him being connected to labour broking though, and I'd expect that would have to be divulged.

Dealing with the claims that top management makes more than the rest of the employees, the financial reports indicate a total payroll of 700 million USD, with 11 million USD being paid to top key management.

Directors earned a total of 4.2 million GBP in cash for their various responsibilites.

Based on the technical analysis, the company's not really doing that well of late. Looks like a game for people with deep pockets and no rush for returns - unless you're Cyril of course.

[tec0]

Let's try to whittle out what's bullsh*t from what's not. The great thing about public companies is they have to disclose all sorts of information. So:

Based on the mandatory transactions with connected parties disclosure, Cyril's been doing rather well. Nothing there about him being connected to labour broking though, and I'd expect that would have to be divulged.

No he "Cyril" has nothing to do with labour broking as far as I can tell. I was just pointing out on the other post that it is not uncommon for people to charge other people for getting them a job and how labour broking works along those lines.