Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Sanford Jacoby - Sunny California to the Roman Road.

Last week I was interviewed by UCLA Professor, Sanford (Sandy) Jacoby. Sandy’s “field of interest is US Business, economic, and Labor history”. He is investigating British Pension funds as part of his research for a new book and has interviewed a number of “usual suspects” in the so far relatively small UK union capital stewardship world.

I really enjoyed the interview. It is not that often (in fact far too rare) that you have open and honest, purposeful, out of the box conversation about what is to you really interesting and important stuff. It wasn’t only a one way conversation since I learnt lots of fascinating information about what is going on in America and what how this may relate to the UK.

My basic understanding is that in the States, trade unions are far more organised with regard to Capital Stewardship than in the UK but have very limited legal rights under company law. While in the UK we have far more legal rights (in theory) but are far, far less organised.

My previous experience of being interviewed by Professors was not always a particularly pleasant one when I was an undergraduate (many, many moons ago). Since we didn’t always see eye to eye on the importance of such things as attending early morning lectures, preparing for tutorials and submitting essays on time.

See this article about Sandy’s research. The big American Car giants have just received huge Federal loans. However, Sandy points out that the blame for the near collapse of traditional US car makers lies not with the workers but with its senior executives. They decided to plough the profits they made in the good times into share buybacks and increased dividends rather than reinvestment ($20 billion in 1980’s).

Companies such as General Motors (GM) failed to invest in research, new models and alternative technology. Toyota in a conscious decision at the time didn’t use its money in this way; they invested in research and alternatives while still looking after their shareholders and are now reaping the benefits.

What interests me is why GM executives (and their professional financial advisers) made this completely destructive decision? Is it just too simplistic to say that the owners of companies such Toyota are more interested in the sustainability of long term profits and therefore made sure that their company executives followed this line? While GM owners handed responsibility to traders who were only concerned with short term gains and ensured that GM executives were also incentivised by short term bonuses. (This is my interpretation of Sandy’s article). This resulted in gas guzzlers piling up unsold in GM dealers while Toyota exports its hybrids around the world.

The London weather was not particularly nice but is was dry. Sandy asked me whether he could take a different route back to the underground station. I suggested walking back via the former Bryant & May buildings where the famous Matchgirls strike of 1888 took place. Sandy, a Labour Movement historian knew of this strike and was pleased to be walking past this site. He mentioned that he thought the whole of the East End was just full of historical buildings, places and monuments important to the history of the Labour movement.

Yes, but it takes a visitor to make us remember this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Its a shame your Nu Labour mates like the tearing apart of the East End look at Bonner School for one the only sites they like to save is the ones they can steal from the public and turn into luxury developments at whatever the cost and destroy the character of the East End for ever pricing out people who were born and bred to make way for Money
Shame another site stolen the London Chest Hospital to be made into luxury accommodation no homes there for local people just more land stolen from local people.