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Losing
the Appetite for Hard Work?
When I read about the people of France
and Netherlands voting down the European Constitution I wonder what it
is that they are protecting. What significant emotional events along the
path toward a European federation have caused them to rebel against what
was once their dream of a unified political and economic force? As a
believer in whole-systems (i.e., that outcomes in a system are the
result of the combined influence of the many parts or forces within that
system -- rarely just a simple cause and effect relationship), I must
believe that there is more than one motivating factor driving them to
this point of vexation. It is likely a combination of many social and
spiritual forces.
Here is one compelling view
from Thomas Friedman, the author of The Lexus and the Olive
Tree, a study of the pros and cons of globalization. France,
Germany, the Netherlands and the rest of the European Union nations are
facing some stiff competition from the poorer nations (China, India,
Poland) who are rising out of their former poverty to become world
economic powers -- a competition that Europe is losing under their
pseudo socialistic governments and economic policies.
And who will the people of God be like?
Will we be like China and India, pouring our hearts and lives into our
vision to rise out of our poverty -- or like many of the Europeans
trying to find shelter from a changing world economy, looking for less
work for more pay and benefits and blind to the changing world about us?
I think there is a cogent metaphor here.
June 3, 2005
A
Race to the Top*
By
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Bangalore, India
It was extremely revealing traveling from Europe to India as French
voters (and now Dutch ones) were rejecting the E.U. constitution - in
one giant snub to President Jacques Chirac, European integration,
immigration, Turkish membership in the E.U. and all the forces of
globalization eating away at Europe's welfare states. It is interesting
because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a
world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck.
Voters in "old Europe" - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy -
seem to be saying to their leaders: stop the world, we want to get off;
while voters in India have been telling their leaders: stop the world
and build us a stepstool, we want to get on. I feel sorry for Western
European blue collar workers. A world of benefits they have known for 50
years is coming apart, and their governments don't seem to have a
strategy for coping.
One reason French voters turned down the E.U. constitution was rampant
fears of "Polish plumbers." Rumors that low-cost immigrant plumbers from
Poland were taking over the French plumbing trade became a rallying
symbol for anti-E.U. constitution forces. A few weeks ago Franz
Müntefering, chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party, compared
private equity firms - which buy up failing businesses, downsize them
and then sell them - to a "swarm of locusts."
The fact that a top German politician has resorted to attacking
capitalism to win votes tells you just how explosive the next decade in
Western Europe could be, as some of these aging, inflexible economies -
which have grown used to six-week vacations and unemployment insurance
that is almost as good as having a job - become more intimately
integrated with Eastern Europe, India and China in a flattening world.
To appreciate just how explosive, come to Bangalore, India, the
outsourcing capital of the world. The dirty little secret is that India
is taking work from Europe or America not simply because of low wages.
It is also because Indians are ready to work harder and can do anything
from answering your phone to designing your next airplane or car. They
are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top.
Indeed, there is a huge famine breaking out all over India today, an
incredible hunger. But it is not for food. It is a hunger for
opportunity that has been pent up like volcanic lava under four decades
of socialism, and it's now just bursting out with India's young
generation.
"India is the oldest civilization, the largest democracy and the
youngest population - almost 70 percent is below age 35 and almost 50
percent is 25 and under," said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian
Express. Next to India, Western Europe looks like an assisted-living
facility with Turkish nurses.
Sure, a huge portion of India still lives in wretched slums or villages,
but more and more of the young cohort are grasping for something better.
A grass-roots movement is now spreading, demanding that English be
taught in state schools - where 85 percent of children go - beginning in
first grade, not fourth grade. "What's new is where this movement is
coming from," said the Indian commentator Krishna Prasad. "It's coming
from the farmers and the Dalits, the lowest groups in society." Even the
poor have been to the cities enough to know that English is now the key
to a tech-sector job, and they want their kids to have those
opportunities.
The Indian state of West Bengal has the oldest elected Communist
government left in the world today. Some global technology firms
recently were looking at outsourcing there, but told the Communists they
could not do so because of the possibility of worker strikes that might
disrupt the business processes of the companies they work for. No
problem. The Communist government declared information technology work
an "essential service," making it illegal for those workers to strike.
Have a nice day.
"This is not about wages at all - the whole wage differential thing is
going to reduce very quickly," said Rajesh Rao, who heads the innovative
Indian game company, Dhruva. It is about people who have been starving
"finally seeing the ability to realize their dreams." Both Infosys and
Wipro, India's leading technology firms, received more than one million
applications last year for a little more than 10,000 job openings.
Yes, this is a bad time for France and friends to lose their appetite
for hard work - just when India, China and Poland are rediscovering
theirs."
*From: Friedman, Thomas
L. "A Race to the Top" New York Times, June 03, 2005.
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