Our House of Lords
Today's Times reports that the Shipyards, the abode of our Workers' Aristocracy, are estimated to have lost another Lm 8.8 million (app. €20 million or about 15% of our budget deficit) last year, all of which will have to be coughed up by the public.
I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't be actually cheaper to set them up as a real aristocracy and just pay them to stay at home. If the current restructuring process doesn't make the company viable by next year (as planned) then that's probably what it will come down to.
Before it's put out of its misery, though, maybe somebody should invite Hugo Chavez for a visit. It certainly did leave a strong impression on Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew when he visited in 1967:
I was determined that our attitude to British aid, indeed any aid, would be the opposite of Malta's. When I visited Malta in 1967 to see how it had sorted out its problems after the rundown of the British forces, I was astounded. The Suez Canal had been closed as a result of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War three months earlier, in June. Ships were no longer going through the canal, hence the dockyard in Malta was closed, but dockyard workers on full pay were playing water polo in the dry dock which they had filled with water! I was shaken by their aid dependency, banking on continuing charity from the British. The British had given fairly generous redundancy payments, including five weeks' salary for each year of service, and had also covered the cost of three months' retraining in Maltese government institutions. This nurtured a sense of dependency not self-reliance.
From Third World to First (2000), p. 52.
5 Comments:
Pietru, to put the Siemens model into perspective - in 2006 Siemens employed 475,000 and churned out $114 billion plus in sales. That’s around 3 times as many employees as Malta Inc. can muster on full steam employment and nearly 15 times Malta’s GDP. And Siemens' $45 million* in training and other grants seems paltry in comparison to the $1,251 million* bill footed to Maltese taxpayers on behalf of the drydock and yard workers up to 2003. We need to do far better than cooperate on the lines of the Siemens model since plan A appears to be tenuous at best and plan B, well there doesn't appear to be a plan B unless you count industrial action and insolvency a plan. What is needed is pragmatic cooperation. Its' that simple.
*Using 11th February 2007 mid-market rates.
Excellent post by the way Piet.
"Strategy implementation often is called the action stage of strategic management. Implementing strategy means mobilizing employees and managers to put formulated strategies into action. Often considered to be the most difficult stage in strategic management, strategy implementation requires personal discipline, commitment, and sacrifice. Successful strategy implementation hinges upon managers' ability to motivate employees, which is more an art than a science. Strategies formulated but not implemented serve no useful purpose" (Tvorik, 2007).
Ah, here comes the “Siemens model” again. Cuschieri's thinking appears to be devoid of any real understanding of the external environment, inter-dependencies, and threats and opportunities that determine how best to develop much less implement a viable strategy based on existing internal competencies.
Footnote: Apologies for the Siemens conversion rate on my first post. Said rate applies to the yard figures only. The Siemens figures below have been revised using 11th February 2007 (Interbank rates – refer bracketed figures below).
“Concrete plans call for earmarking €25 million ($32.53 million) of the €35-million ($13.01 million) aid fund for employee training, continuing education and placement measures. The remaining €10 million will be used to help employees in cases of special needs”.
Correction:
“Concrete plans call for earmarking €25 million ($32.53 million) of the €35-million ($45.54 million) aid fund for employee training, continuing education and placement measures. The remaining €10 million ($13.01 million) will be used to help employees in cases of special needs”.
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