@Chris McCarthy wrote:
@logan wrote:
Chris I do understand your point and maybe my statement was a tad harsh.
The system is very hierarchical the attitude is the next person up the line is the one who always takes the decisions and carries the responsibility because they get more pay. An attitude of ‘Not me Gov’ prevails in the culture. The average Spanish worker is fine if you tell him what to do and leave him the whole day or week to do it. Ask anything more and they are stuffed.
It’s been a while, to be fair since I was an active employer but I don’t believe the culture has changed significantly.
Yep I get that you perhaps didn’t mean it as it sounded. I know you are always even handed in that regard normally.
I think attitudes have changed a good bit though, and it also depends on the businesses today acting in a positive, motivational and proactive way I think.
The system is what it is, we have to accept it and get on with it, I work today with some fabulously committed staff on contract and on autonomo, I have worked with 100’s over the years and I haven’t encountered anything other than a terrific support for the business, from pretty much every single person.
And, I just can’t see how the UK can blithely and meekly submit to paying literally millions of people to sit at home and see Spain getting knocked when it just doesn’t do that and working people pay a high price for that.
Again, the system is what it is, I think this desperate recession will make employees perhaps think twice in the future when they get a job about their attitude, and as for those currently in employment, well they know how lucky they are, and often they are supporting at least one or two family members who are not so lucky. They are doing it however – not the state as in the UK.
Am struggling to think which is better on that basis – the UK or Spain?
The cards may be stacked against the Spanish workforce and economy (Euro crisis, international press, speculators) but it seems their performance as regards exports and performance in the last few years has actually been exceptional.
The current account deficit, which was 10 percent of gross domestic product at the height of the boom in 2007, will decline to 0.9 percent this year and flip to a surplus in 2013, the government forecasts. Productivity gains outpaced the euro- region average in each of the three years through 2011, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show.
“Exports performed quite well last year, as a result of a gain in competitiveness,” said Ricardo Santos, a European economist at BNP Paribas SA in London. “Spain is around half way” through the correction it needs to make in competitiveness, he said.
