Work-life balance, French-style: No after-hours work email

PARIS
If you liked the 35-hour workweek, then you'll love the ban on after-office-hours email which has become law in France this week (actually it is an agreement between business and union which as such as the force of law.) Since there is little doubt that many employees are overworked and stressed out  anything that could restore a healthier work-life balance can only be applauded. Few people realize that France, supposedly a worker's heaven, is also home to frequent corporate suicides.

There is clearly a cultural bias here. Whereas in Europe in general, and in France, the country of la joie de vivre, in particular, work-life balance is seen as enhancing workers' rights, in the United States, the country of 24 x 7 business, it is considered  a cost on business.

First, let us clarify what this new policy is all about. It does not apply to all French employees, only to those working in consulting and technology companies, therefore at most one million employees. Actually, when you take into account executives (cadres) who do not have a strict work schedule, probably just a few hundred thousand employees will be impacted by this law. Of course, nothing can prevent the current administration from extending the law to all French employees, say, before the next election, when it is desperate to emerge from the abysmal approval ratings it has sunk into.

Second, enforcing this law is not going to be easy. Actually almost impossible. There are so many ways to circumvent it that one wonders why they even bothered to adopt it. For example, even if you are one of those employees prevented from sending email after 6 pm, nothing can prevent you from copying  on a thumb drive any documents you need, go home, work from there and then shoot an email from your private email address. People have been doing this for years, and will now be encouraged to do it even more.

Then, there is the case of those road warriors, especially when traveling across time zones. It may be 6 pm in Moscow, but because France is a couple of hours behind it means you still have a few more hours to shoot that criminal message before your email server goes dead.

And, of course, nothing can stop you from writing zillions of messages offline, and the next morning, as the email server wakes up, it'll find itself busy dispatching tens of thousands of messages which  will create even more anxiety, pressure and workload on the recipient workers.

So, why is the government (in France no labor agreement happens without the state's blessing) bothering about a law which for all practical purposes will not protect burnt-out employees, but can work as a disincentive for foreign investors in France? The problem is the disconnect between politics and business/technology. No matter how fast you adopt a law, it always lags behind technological advances which are so much faster.

Controversial or pioneering? France goes where others fear to tread

If government bodies had any idea of what the business world REALLY looks like and how disruptive technology can be, they would not stop at email. What about social media? Government should also stop corporate employees sending business-related tweets, or updating information on LinkedIn. And yet, none of this is contemplated.

And what about business software? A lot of the work that people do now is done through ERP-type systems many of which can be accessed via the cloud anywhere, anytime. As a manager, you can still finalize a performance appraisal after having served dinner to your children. You could check on the recruitment status of some job vacancies in your team after having watched your favorite TV show. Again, the law does not  even seem to realize that such technology use is even more prevalent than email and can impact a worker's work-life balance even more significantly.

Worse, as I mentioned earlier, this new policy could have an adverse impact on workers by reducing the number of jobs available to them. Just as I have never known in my adult life France with a balanced budget, I have rarely seen an unemployment rate lower than 8% or 9%, it usually hovers around 10%. This new law is not going to encourage companies to hire more workers in France; and, honestly, what kind of work-life balance are we talking about here when we know that without work you don't have much of a life?

In summary, this new law won't change much. It will just add more compliance costs to companies, deter foreign ones from hiring in France and put even more pressure on employees to do more within the 9-to-5 work  schedule, thus achieving the exact opposite of what it set out to do.

Oh, mon Dieu! I am posting this business column on a Sunday. I am in full violation of French labor laws that forbid work on  the Lord's Day. If you don't hear from me in the next couple of weeks, that will mean that the Labor Inspector has knocked on my door and I am languishing in jail for contempt of the laws of the Republic.

1992-2012: My 20-year Affair with Spain

From the blogger's collection, a painting of the
Alhambra's Courtyard of the Lions in Granada.
When Boabdil, the last Arab ruler in Spain, was
expelled from Granada he cast a last glance at
his palace and shed a tear.  To which
his mother said, "Weep like a woman  over
what you couldn't defend like a man."

MADRID
Twenty Christmases ago, almost to the day, I bade farewell to four years in the United States, boarded a Spain-bound flight which delivered me to a new life in this town. I had never been to Spain, did not speak Spanish, had no home, no friends or family there and was starting a new job with a company I knew little about, except that it was the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO.) *

I was to spend the next three years calling Madrid home before moving to the country I was born in and where I still have my main residence (for how much longer is a legitimate question, though.) For the ensuing 17 years I have been visiting Spain, and especially Madrid,  for either business or pleasure, at such frequency that it still feels as if I have not left the place.**

And yet so much has changed, and so much remains the same, and so much have I learned about it, that this anniversary is a good opportunity to share my views of Spain then and now.


EL AÑO DE ESPAÑA - THE YEAR OF SPAIN
The country I had landed in had just been celebrating the double-whammy 500th anniversary of the Reconquista paving the way to unification and the discovery of the Americas, as well as the twin events of the Universal Exposition  in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona. After the nation's long decline culminating with the loss of most of its colonial possessions in the 19th century, and the long night of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) there was clearly a feeling that the country was finally on the right track. Just 10 years ago Spain had joined the European Union, money galore was flowing into the country which was setting about developing large-scale infrastructure projects and there was a clearly perceptible sense of optimism.


BUSINESS AND HR 
In one respect, things don't seem to have changed much. When I arrived in Spain the unemployment rate was around 23%, going up to 40% for under-30-year-olds. Most of the friends of my age that I was to make were still living with Mom and Dad, making me an oddity with my own apartment (something which of course was completely normal in the United States I had just left.) Fast-forward 20 years and things seem not to have changed at all. The sad reality of Spain is that unfortunately things had changed: the jobless rate steadily declined to an unprecedented single digit before, thanks to the financial meltdown first and then the debt crisis, moving back to those horrible  levels that we all thought belonged to the past.

Town hall meeting Spanish-style. Protests on the
Puerta del Sol in the summer of  2011.
Occupy Puerta del Sol, if you will.

The true measure of the Spanish tragedy is that human nature is such that we can live without something for a long time (back then rarely did people demonstrate against high unemployment) but take away from us something we had gotten used to and we feel particularly bad about it, which explains the constant protests these days.

As a reaction to the current crisis, Spanish labor laws have been overhauled so radically that trade unions are still too dizzy to react. Much of the employee protection (especially in the firing department) that had been in place from time immemorial is gone and with salary levels frozen, the workforce is about to become competitive. Whether this will be sufficient to put a dent in the unemployment rate remains to be seen since some inherent Spanish workforce problems are still present, in particular low productivity levels. Spanish companies (or the various government training schemes) will have to invest massively in  bringing their employees' skills up to speed to what is necessary to turn the economy around. One area where Spaniards tend to be particularly bad are in sciences and languages. Unlike their fellow Iberians in neighboring Portugal, most Spaniards are only fluent in their own language. Many, especially young graduates, are  looking at job opportunities abroad, especially in Germany or the UK, but are hampered by poor linguistic skills. And Spain's political leadership is not leading by example: the four Prime Ministers the country has had in the past 20 years have had one thing in common - bad to no command of the English language, or any other for that matter.

A MORE GLOBAL SPAIN AND COSMOPOLITAN MADRID

The blogger with friends celebrating  Bastille Day 1995 at
a garden party held at the French Ambassador's residence

The latter point comes a bit as a surprise since in the 20 years I have know Spain it has become markedly less parochial. The first years after I arrived in Madrid I still felt I was a guiri since foreigners were very rare and everywhere you went you only heard Spanish or saw Spaniards (how unlike the city I had just left.) You rarely saw blacks or Arabs and as for Latin Americans they were not any more visible. A decade later  and foreign-born residents had risen to 10% of the country's population. Walk down any street in Madrid and you are bound to see people who manifestly hail from Spain's former American colonies something unheard of when I lived there. Some Spanish companies have become true global giants such as Telefónica, whose foreign revenues exceed what it makes at home home or Spain's wunderkind Armancio Ortega's Inditex whose Zara brand of clothing is ubiquitous all over the world and is consistently profitable, even in recession time. Santander, who was my first Global Payroll customer when I was at PeopleSoft, is Europe's largest bank and well-established in Latin America, especially in Brazil where it is one of the two foreign banks of consequence.

One of the most impressive companies to have come out of Spain and gone global was an improbable software company, Meta4. Spain is well-known for many things but the Silicon Valley it sure ain't. And yet in the 1990s, literally out of nowhere, came this HR software company with modern object-oriented technology, great user interface and a very seductive knowledge-management product. It was soon to become the leader in its home market before expanding to other European countries (mainly France) and Latin America (in particular Mexico, Argentina and Colombia where large government organizations and private businesses run their HR processes on Meta4.)

Madrid as the nation's capital and foremost business center reflects that global outlook. Starbucks is everywhere; Broadway musicals,  something unheard of when I lived there, are popular with currently The Lion King and The Sound of Music on offer at some of the several theatres on the Gran Via, Madrid's main thoroughfare. Foreign cuisine has also made its entrance. Last time I was in Madrid I walked down Calle Lavapiés to go the square of the same name. I was stunned to see both sides of the street lined with Indian and Pakistan restaurants. Hangers-on also offered me another, illicit type of nourishment.

HR AND CORPORATE TECHNOLOGY
Although IT budgets are tight and the decision-making process longer than usual, Spanish companies could benefit from renewed investment in technology, in particular more modern HR systems. Here are some of the Spain-specific drivers and issues:

     § The new labor law and regulations (Estatuto de los trabajadores) put in place by the current (center-right) administration mean that HR admin and payroll systems are in for a big overhaul. Updating the various systems is a project in and of itself and could be the opportunity to launch into other higher-value projects.

     § Of these, a comprehensive competency-based model and learning system would go a long way to solve some of the productivity and low-skill issues of the Spanish workforce. Spanish companies have always had a vested interested in training if only to solve some of their endemic health and safety issues. To improve their H&S record what better way than invest in training, with online training becoming the default choice.

     § Spanish payroll, although a  bit simplified by the new laws, still remains, like most payrolls, complex to implement, although I would not rate it as complex as in Italy or California. It is also the cornerstone of most HR systems. This explains why local vendors such as Meta4 or Grupo Castilla still lead the pack of HR vendors (Meta4 dominates in the Ibex35 roster of large Spanish companies), followed by global vendors such as SAP and PeopleSoft who took a long time to understand and adapt their products to Spanish requirements (Oracle never managed to have a localized offering for Spain.) Here are some quirks of Spanish payroll:  parallel payroll process, peculiar retro calculations, the multiplicity of labor agreements which cover every aspect of a worker's with their employer.

     § Spanish companies have yet to fully leverage the functional value and financial advantages of SaaS- based HR systems, especially in the talent-management space. As for moving their entire HR system to a cloud-based model that will take a bit longer, when the economy stabilizes and true SaaS vendors like Workday decide to enter the Spanish market. If I have one recommendation to make to Workday and similar vendors it is not to waste any more time to establish a local presence. The best moment to start planting the seeds of  future growth is when things are rough.

     § Not only is the SaaS model slow to take off in Spain, but another key ingredient of a modern corporate IT system is going to be a drag on its modernization: the corporate mobile revolution is not going to take place soon. Blame the deep recession for this backward trend. In 2011 Spain was the country with the highest cell phone penetration rate in the world, with 96% of Spaniards owning a mobile device. This year a whopping 2 million mobile phones went off the air as both consumers and companies reduce their costs and cancel their mobile contracts. That is 5% of the country's population deciding to forgo going mobile. Meaning that BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)  is one trend that Spanish companies will not have to deal with soon.

     § Hard times may be pushing Spaniards away from cell phones, but the internet is as popular as ever and unleashing their creativity in unexpected ways. Some of them are using the Web to express their frustration at the recession and the results can be hilarious and insightful like Españistán, a brilliant graphic novel published last year by a Barcelona cartoonist. The popular web series Malviviendo (Living Badly) is quite revealing of a down-and out youth which tries to find comic relief on the internet. Its dark humor is shared by other Web comedies like Las asqueadas (The Disgusted Ones) and the self-explanatory Parados (The Jobless) and are much more revealing about Spain's economic distress than any lengthy report by the IMF or the European Commission. This also shows that this lost generation is quite talented, come to think of it.

     § Recruiting (which in Spain usually goes by Selección de personal) should be a hot area for both suppliers and user organizations. If you think this statement is counterintuitive considering the recession in Spain, think about the following: a high unemployment rate means that a higher number of candidates are sending in their applications. Without a modern talent-acquisition tool, of which many Spanish companies are in sore need, it will be challenging to deal with the increase in workload. So, even if you are going to turn them down, at least you owe it to them to do it speedily  and correctly, something which antiquated systems do not allow.

     § The larger number of foreign-born workers I mentioned earlier, means that for the first time Spanish employers are dealing with a new HR reality: diversity in the workplace. Tools, processes, corporate culture will have to change to reflect this new dimension.

     § As for which global HR technology vendors are best equipped to handle Spanish companies' requirements, here is my league table. It is based on functional depth, localization quality, number of references, resource availability, quality of support and strategy.

LITERATURE
The avid reader I am means that in these two decades that I have practised Spain I have read dozens of works by Spanish writers or foreigners writing about Spain. Here is a list of the ones I have enjoyed and strongly recommend:

     § As soon as I became fluent in Spanish one of my colleagues at WTO lent me Antonio Larreta's Volavérunt. A historical novel set at the early 19th century court in Madrid, it won the Premio Planeta, one of Spain's major literary prizes, in 1980.  I was lucky that for my foray into Spanish literature I was regaled with a great novel on two quintessential Spanish historical characters, painter Goya and the 13th Duchess of Alba (see more of her namesake and distant heiress below under Art.)

     § Anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes is a delightful picaresque novel from the mid-16th century, before Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. I only read the latter in its full edition last year and was captivated by it. I now understand why the opening line, "Somewhere in La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recall...", have become immortal words. Grahame Greene's latter-day take on the story of the Knight of the Sad Countenance, Monsignor Quixote, is a brilliant tale of 1980s Spain.

     § La regenta, by Leopoldo Alas aka Clarín, is another classic Spanish novel, from the century of great novels, and is Spain's answer to France's Madame Bovary or Russia's Anna Karenina. While reading it I found myself several times checking its publication date: I could hardly believe it came out in the late 19th century so modern is the treatment of the story and characters.

     § Reporter-turned-writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte has been Spain's best-selling sensation for as far as I can remember, writing thrillers and historical adventures. My favorite is The Flanders Panel (La tabla de Flandes in its original title) of which a movie was made under the title Uncovered. I do not recommend to see the movie before reading the novel since I found the movie a big spoiler, even if well made. The Club Dumas, similarly set in the world of antique booksellers, is also pretty good.

     § Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind is a page-turner set in post-war Barcelona, and became  the best-selling Spanish novel of all times (and the second one in the Spanish-language.)

     § If you ever wondered what would happen if writers decided to stop writing, then read Enrique Vila-Mata's Bartleby & Co, a brainy and erudite disquisition on the power, or mania, of saying "no."

     § For lighter fare, especially of the crime variety, Barcelona-based Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's novels featuring Pepe Carvalho are great, authentic reads.

     § Finally, Cuban-born but Madrid resident José Carlos Somoza wrote a unique book, The Athenian Murders (La caverna de las ideas in Spanish.) It is actually two parallel stories, one being the echo of the other in the form of footnotes which grow into a full-fledged plot until the story's dénouement when the two storylines merge. Imaginative and creative, it is truly astounding. A virtuoso achievement.

     § Although not Spanish, Washington Irving has probably done more than anybody else to publicize the country's number one tourist attraction: the Alhambra (see the above painting.) With his romantic Tales of the Alhambra, the  American writer contributed to rescue from neglect and decay the splendor of Arab Spain in the city of Granada. When I visited the palace in the early 1990s it was still a mundane affair. Now, you need to book your ticket weeks in advance. Question: which royal dynasty has reigned the longest in (and not over) Spain? Answer: the Ummayads in Cordoba for 300 years, whereas the current Bourbons have barely reached 250 years.

     § French writer George Sand wrote a travelogue covering part of Spain and mainly the island of Majorca. At times condescending, her book is a great read to get an idea of what tourism was like 200 years ago. Traveling from France to Spain, now a simple hour-and-a-half flight, then felt like visiting another planet. A Winter in Majorca (Un hiver à Majorque in the original French) actually says more about her (yes, George Sand was a female writer) than about  Spain or Majorca.

From the blogger's library some great books by Spanish
writers (and a couple of foreigners writing about Spain)

MOVIES (AND MUSIC)
Spain has been blessed with some distinguished filmmakers.

     § Luis Buñuel's Viridiana  (1961) with the great actor Fernando Rey is loosely based on a novel by Pérez Galdós, a great 19th century Spanish writer. Banned by the Catholic Church and Franco's regime (yes, in those days there was a list of films and books which Catholics were forbidden from watching or reading under threat of roasting in Hell's eternal flames), it went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film festival. And deservedly so as this subversive tale of old Spain is a true masterpiece. The dinner party with the beggars taking over  the masters' home is a piece of cinema anthology.

     § Made in the early 1970s but set in 1940s rural Spain, The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena) is a spellbinding movie about the mysteries, anxieties and fears of childhood.

     § Bigas Luna's comedy  Jamón, Jamón was the first Spanish movie I saw after arriving in Spain where it had just been released. It served to introduce two young actors, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, years before they were catapulted to Oscar-winning  super-stardom status and became husband and wife. 1992 also saw another good Spanish movie with Ms. Cruz, Belle Epoque. When its director, Fernando Trueba went to pick up his Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, he stated: "If I believed in God, I'd thank him for this. But since I don't believe in God, then I'll thank Billy Wilder." By then there was no Caudillo Franco or Catholic Church Index to cast aspersion on him and his movie about the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War. (Belle Epoque was the movie that earned the national treasure that Almodóvar girl Chus Lampreave is her only Goya award)

     § A terrific talent since his film debut, Thesis, (1996) is Alejandro Amenábar. His third (English-language) film with none other than la Kidman, Gothic thriller The Others, (2001) established his global filmmaking credentials (the ending will leave you speechless) which were further enhanced by the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for his next project, Out to Sea (2004) with an astonishing performance by Javier Bardem. I met Alejandro in Madrid a couple of years ago and he struck me as a most relaxed and normal person which, for somebody who works in the film industry, is quite a feat.

     § None, of course, approaches even remotely the astonishing international success of Pedro Almodóvar. When I arrived in Spain, the movida madrileña was in full swing. The term refers to the explosion of freedom  in the arts (see below), nightlife, music and movies  following the 40 years of repressed life the country had endured under Franco's dictatorship. No one epitomized the movida more than the irrepressible Almodóvar who has dominated Spanish cinema for the past 30 years becoming one of the best Spanish global brands abroad (I should have added him to the list above next to Zara et al.) With a unique style mixing kitsch, melodrama, screwball comedy (especially in the early movies), irreverent humor and unconventional, graphic sex, Almodóvar has managed one feat that few have in contemporary cinema: remaining true to his national roots. *** All his movies are grounded in Spain, with Spanish themes such as the downtrodden housewife and the return to one's pueblo (or rural origins). My favorites are:

          ¤ Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1989) is a hilarious film that ranks among  the best comedies ever shown on the big screen. It is up there with the works of Lubitsch and Cukor.

          ¤ High Heels (1991) with a terrific rendition of the song Piensa en Mi by Luz Casal      which sets every string of my soul aquiver with emotion, the way Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez does. (Spanish popular songs are a hallmark of Almodóvar's films.)

          ¤ The Flower of My Secret came out as I bade farewell to Madrid. Maybe that is why I am so fond of it, but there is no denying that Almodóvar matured with this movie.

          ¤ With All About My Mother (1999) Almodóvar reached even higher critical heights. The movie, a paean to past actresses such as Bette Davis (the title is inspired by one of her most famous movies, All About Eve) received Oscars, Cannes prizes, Golden Globes and other awards galore.

          ¤ Bad Education (2004) about child abuse, drugs, sexual transgression is particularly well-written with plots and subplots that seem at first confusing until you realize the point the writer-director is trying to make.

Penélope Cruz, one of Almodóvar's muses,
 is Spain's answer to Italy's Sophia Loren.
Volver was another great success by the Spanish
director and won a Best Actress award for the
entire female cast at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival 

      § Although made by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and a Mexican studio, Pan's Labyrinth (2006) is set in 1940s Spain and includes a largely Spanish cast (Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ariadna Gil). It is a stunning dark fantasy tale which won a host of awards (including several Academy Awards) as well as enthusiastic critical reviews.

Finally, the film buff that I am can only be saddened by the relentless pace at which movie theatres are closing in Spain, especially in Madrid, where the main drag, the Gran Via, is seeing almost all of its cinemas closing one after the other. The Palacio de la Música, one of the grandest of the film palaces, will now be turned into a store. I have counted them and since my days in Madrid and now, 10 movie theatres on Madrid's answer to Broadway have closed: Along with the aforementioned Palacio de la Música, the Azul is going to be made into a restaurant, the Luna has been closed for a while and makes a sad sight, the Avenida is also closed and it is unclear what it will become etc. Sic transit gloria cinemae...

MUSIC-wise, 1992 was the year that Manolo Tena's Sangre española came out. This song, along with the ones by Luz Casal (mentioned earlier), Alaska, Azucar Moreno, the soundtrack of Las cosas del querer, among so many others, would delight me during my Madrid years. Special mention have to go to Joaquin Rodrigo and his out-of-this-world Concierto de Aranjuez which still gets my heart aflutter when I listen to it.

ARTS

The year of my arrival in Madrid was also a vintage year for the arts. Until then if you were into arts you headed for the Prado Museum where you could admire some of Spain's greatest works of art by the likes of Goya, Velázquez, Zurbarán housed in a lovely 18th-century building. One of my favorite painters is Hieronymous Bosch whose Garden of Earthly Delights still amazes me. Whenever I visit the Prado I always make sure I go check it out. Great as the Prado is it was basically the only truly great museum in Madrid until 1992 when two terrific museums opened: the Reina Sofía galleries, dedicated to more modern fare, and the Thyssen Museum which houses the private collection of Baron Thyssen who, to Spain's luck, married a Spanishwoman. The Baroness made sure that their awe-inspiring collection remain in her native land**** and the result was that Madrid over the years has developed what is now known as The Art Triangle.

If you are visiting Madrid over the Christmas/New Year's holidays through next spring, I cannot recommend enough checking out the marvelous expo "Legacy of the House of Alba" housed in the wedding cake building of what in my days used to be the main Post Office.

Apart from Britain, Spain is the only country in Europe where the aristocracy not only is recognized by the government but has also retained  much of its fortune in the form of large estates and grand palaces. Of these great Spanish aristocratic families the House of Alba is second to none. Headed by the 18th Duchess of Alba (unlike Britain, Spain's titles are passed to women), who is one of the most colorful (some would say eccentric)  people in Spain for as far back as one remembers, the House of Alba has been accumulating riches and patronizing the arts for over half a millennium: the third Duke, in the 16th century, was   viceroy of Naples (then a Spanish possession), brutally suppressed the Dutch (Dutch children are still being scared out of their naughty ways by being threatened with "Be good or I'll call the Duke of Alba") and conquered Portugal, among other minors feats. The 13th Duchess, in the 18th century, was the most famous woman in Spain and had her Madrid home (Buenavista Palace) right across from where the exhibit takes place (before she sold it to the Spanish government who turned it into the army HQ) and was the heroine of that first book I mentioned earlier.

A portrait by Goya of the 13th Duchess of Alba
adorns the cover of the exhibit catalog,
a copy of which is now part of
the blogger's library

The current Duchess, who as a child was a playmate of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in London where her father was ambassador, is a direct descendant of the Stuart kings who reigned over Scotland and England (the short version of her last name is Fitz-James Stuart y Silva) and her great-aunt was none other than the (Spanish-born) French Empress Eugénie (Napoleon III's consort) who went to live with the family after losing throne, husband and son (respectively.) She died, in 1920, at the family's Madrid home (Liria Palace) and bequeathed to them all her possessions. You don't get more blue-blooded than that - literally: according to  the Guinness Book of Records the Duchess of Alba holds more titles of nobility than anybody else and her wealth is estimated at around €4 billion. As the saying goes, "the Duchess of Alba is the only person who can travel from the north to the south of Spain without ever leaving her lands."  

With such a pedigree, history and cashflow you can expect amazing works of art to grace the family's multiple homes (the three best known ones are in Madrid, Seville and Salamanca.) Because they are part of a  private collection they are rarely seen in public so when an exhibit like the current one is put together  it is an opportunity not to be missed.  Since I was in Madrid during the 20th anniversary of my first arrival in Spain, what better way to celebrate it than visit an exhibit which celebrates an even great longevity? Here are amazing works by Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Fra Angelico, Goya, Chagall, medieval manuscripts, letters and maps made by Christopher Columbus himself (the Duchess counts the Great Discoverer of America as one of her ancestors and inherited many of his personal papers.)

Should you be visiting Madrid and looking for a great hotel experience, my favorite is the grand Palace Hotel  smack in the middle of the Art Triangle. It occupies the spot where used to be the home of another leading aristocratic family, the Dukes of Medinaceli, and is also celebrating an anniversary this year: its 100th. I recommend getting a room with a view on the leafy Paseo del Prado and the Neptune Fountain (right across is its competitor, the Ritz.) Having a drink or coffee under its dazzling stained-glass cupola is a religious experience. I used it as the setting of a scene in my book, High-Tech Planet. Among the rich and famous who have stayed there is Madrid lover Ava Gardner. The legendary screen goddess would come back in the wee hours of the morning after having danced the night away in a tablao flamenco often accompanied by a torero, as bullfighters are known. Not bad for the daughter of a South Carolina sharecropper. (In an interesting twist on how art imitates life, one of Ava Gardner's best-known roles, in Joseph L. Mankiewizc's The Barefoot Contessa, is that of a Madrid flamenco cabaret dancer who rises to Hollywood fame before her life ends in tragedy.) A word of caution: don't ask a Madrilian, not even a cabdriver, for the Westin Palace (as it is officially known now that it is part of the Starwood Hotels family.) You are likely to draw a blank before they reply, "Oh, you mean el Palace!." For us Madrilians, whether native or adopted, it will always remain the Palace.

THOUGHTS ON THE SPANISH LANGUAGE
Since I speak several languages fluently, I am often asked what my preferred one is. The Emperor Charles V  was in Renaissance times the most powerful man in Europe of which he owned large chunks, including Spain whose first king he was (and as such he rests for eternity in the magnificent royal necropolis at the Escorial, just outside Madrid.) To manage such diversity of people, he found it convenient to be a polyglot and used to say: "I speak Italian to ladies, French to men, Dutch to horses, German to soldiers and Spanish to God."

I don't necessarily agree with the great man (great because being master of the world, he abdicated of his own volition to finish his days in a remote Spanish monastery) but I find English a flexible language, French a precise one, Arabic very flowery, Portuguese (especially the Brazilian variety) colorful and Spanish friendly. By that I mean that I enjoy using the Spanish language (usually referred to in Spain as Castilian) in informal settings. I feel particularly relaxed using it.

Every language has its own quirks which reflect the national characters of its people. Some Spanish words have always held a particular spell on me.  Here are some of them:

     § Spanish is the only language that I know of which has a specific word for "fingertips" ("yema"). All other languages use compound words to refer to the tip of one's fingers so it has always captivated me that Spaniards would "bother" to create a specific word for it. It is noteworthy, though, that whereas French has orteils, English toes and German Zehe, Spanish uses the same word (dedo) to refer to the digits of both hand and foot.

     § "Asomarse" is used to refer to someone appearing at a window or balcony, but never at a door. Other languages don't make such a distinction: if you come out of your house, does it really matter whether you do it on the porch or a top floor? Obviously it does in Spain.

     § There are few rules you can make about languages, but one that in my opinion and experience holds true is that the most common words tend to be short ones, just one or two syllables. Thus the English hole is trou in French, qar in Mauritanian Arabic, buraco in Portuguese, an even shorter buco in Italian but a four-syllable word in Spanish: agujero. Same thing for acantilado (cliff) or ordeñar (to milk an animal) which tend to be just one or two syllables long in other languages but three or four long in Spanish. Why so long?

     § "Desasosiego" means "uneasiness, disquiet" and like its English equivalents it is also created by using a negative prefix. Except that the Spanish root word is sosiego so in desasosiego we have two negative prefixes as if to reinforce the condition being described. Are Spaniards particularly anxious people?

     § "Ensimismado" is another fascinating Spanish word. It means "deep in thought" or "pensive." Created from en si mismo it literally means "into-oneselved." 

SPAIN THEN AND NOW
I have witnessed so many changes over the years in Spain in general, and in Madrid in particular, that it would take a book to cover them all. In addition to some comments already made above, here are some, most on the plus side though.

My first reaction when I arrived in Madrid over Christmas 1992 was how loud, chaotic and smoke-filled a place it was. It is such a pleasure now to be able to go to bars, restaurants, clubs and not having to start coughing after a while before going back home with stinking clothes. I remember parking my car on the sidewalk between the Calle de Alcalá and the Gran Via before a night out: no qualms about it since everybody parked anywhere. That is now a thing of the past, thank God. And my favorite is the large pedestrian-only areas that grace the city center: Calle Fuencarral, Calle Arenal all the way to the Opera House and the Royal Palace. It allows you to sit outside and enjoy the lovely spring/summer weather and the great quality of light. (How retarded Paris is that we still have cars contending with passersby in those narrow streets of the Marais.)

The infrastructure program the government embarked on when I arrived in 1992 has delivered stunning results: the Madrid metro has become one of the best I know (unlike the dreadful one we have in Paris or the antiquated London Tube) allowing you to go from downtown to the airport in 20 minutes and at the cost of a few euros. Bullet trains now link the two major cities of Madrid and Barcelona (it used to take me half a day at least to drive between the two cities) thus obviating the need for the puente aéreo air shuttle (Brazilians would be well inspired to go ahead with their plans to do the same between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.)

Spain, whose kings carried the title of Most Catholic Monarchs,  has undergone one of the most amazing social changes in modern times. Divorce, abortion and gay marriage have come so fast you could barely utter "amen!" Already in the 1990s I was surprised to see that every small town in Spain had its gay bar, which was quite a big change coming from the conservative (some would say intolerant) United States.

Politically, the country has wisely alternated between left and right, having had until last year only three Prime Ministers in 20 years, ample proof of the strong social and political consensus which was so lacking in the 1930s. Hard to believe that just the previous decade before my arrival Spain suffered a coup attempt that threatened to send it back to military dictatorship. Hats off to King Juan Carlos who stood firm and managed to rally people, political parties and  most of the military command to his side to protect the democratic system (the King was luckier than his brother-in-law, King Constantine of Greece, who faced a similar crisis but was outmaneuvered by the Greek Colonels.) Few people realize that Don Juan Carlos is the world's only political leader who once held absolute power and willingly let go of it to allow democratic government. During all the time I lived in Spain, and for years afterwards, the King was highly respected and never criticized but recently, due to the economic crisis, people have become more critical of the royal institution as they have of all other institutions.

You can't stop change, it comes one way or another. Last week saw the demise of Banesto, one of Spain's oldest banks. Wonder what will happen to its grand head office on Calle Alcalá. Another Madrid institution, the Preciados department store, was also gone by the end of my stint there. Only a street remembers its name. The Prado has built an ugly annex next to the medieval Jeronimos church. Somebody ought to be shot for having defiled that gorgeous church. Four giant towers have sprung up north of the city. They are now largely empty, a testament to real-estate speculation gone completely berserk and responsible for the crisis the country finds itself in. (Boom is a great tell-all novel by insider Laura Anguera who reveals in it all the mechanics and shenanigans of the real-estate boom-and-bust cycle in Spain.) And yet nobody has been prosecuted for the mess. Total impunity seems to be the rule in Spain and most of the Western world as far as the culprits are concerned.

Spaniards may have accepted to put an end to their public smoking addiction, but there is one tradition they are clinging to ferociously: keeping late hours. There seems to be no way they will adapt the "decent" lunch and dinner times that most of the rest of the world keeps. I still find it hard, and even more so as middle age has relentlessly crept up, to get used to having lunch at 3 pm and dinner at 10/11 pm. Going out for post-prandial drinks or some partying means coming back home at a "normal" 4 or 5 am time, especially on weekends.

Since New Year's Eve is upon us, another reflection of how things have changed. In 1992 young people still dressed up for the Nochevieja partying: tuxedos and bow ties were ubiquitous in clubs, something you are hardly likely to see now. Also, pop music ruled the waves in those discos but, suddenly, the DJ would play something completely different: sevillanas (a type of flamenco dance) and everybody, young and less young, would start making the elaborate moves on the dance floor. Intoxicating. Nowadays, unless you go to a specialized flamenco joint, you are as likely to see people dancing sevillanas in Madrid clubs as you are to see Mayoress Ana Botella selling her body on the street.

Speaking of which, one street in Madrid has barely changed in 20 years. Calle Montera has become a pedestrian-only area, but is still home to streetwalkers who tout their wares and ply their trade in full view of everybody. Whereas in other world cities it would be considered shocking to see prostitutes in the city center, in Madrid locals and tourists walk by with utter indifference. One evolution, though, reflects the extent to which Madrid's ethnic make up has also changed between 1992 and 2012: back then the ladies of the night on Calle Montera used to be old and ugly and mainly Spanish, before their ranks swelled with Africans and Latin American immigrants. Now, they are mainly young, pretty and from Eastern Europe. The national origin may change, but the business remains the same.

Pelas, perras chicas and sábanas are also gone as Spaniards
enthusiastically  adopted the euro a few years
after I left. They are now wondering
whether they did the right thing.

As for Spain's ethnic makeup, I am still impressed that the country has gone quickly to absorb large populations of foreign-born residents (Arabs, Latinos, black Africans, Eastern European) and yet you never see riots and tensions between native and immigrant groups the way you have them in Paris, London and other large European cities. Xenophobic, far-right political groups are unheard of in Spain, another proof of how tolerant and open modern Spanish society is. Even now, with the country in deep crisis, native Spaniards have yet to show any hostility to foreigners or to blame them for their economic travails. Quite impressive.   

Another major Spanish tradition, bullfighting, which was huge in 1992 is losing in popular appeal and coming under attack. Just as I could never make sense of American football, in spite of four years in the States, I could never understand the love that Spaniards have for corridas. I love many Spanish traditions but find goring bulls quite resistible.***** This being said, banning it altogether as they have done in secession-prone Catalonia smacks more of political score-settling than any true consideration for animal rights. In other less controversial sports, Spaniards keep on excelling, especially at tennis and soccer where they have become the undisputed masters. That is a legacy of all the preparation and investment that went into the 1992 Olympic Games.

Finally, on the foreign-policy front, one issue remains as strong now as it was then: the dispute with Britain over Gibraltar. Here I disagree with my Spanish friends since (a) a democratic country cannot seriously countenance forcing a territory which has been ruled separately for three centuries to join you if the overwhelming majority of residents are against it, and (b) why do you insist on granting yourselves this "unification" right which you refuse to Morocco with which you have an identical dispute?

I expect the country will go through many more changes this decade, none probably so wrenching as the ones triggered by the current economic tragedy. But one thing is unlikely to change: my bond with the country.  Of all my love stories none has been deeper, more intense and more enduring than the one with Spain, its people, its land, its culture and its language.



*Back then this UN agency was simply known as WTO until, a couple of years later,  a rival, Geneva-based organization (World Trade Organization), decided to have the same English-language initials, thus obliging the older, Madrid-based organization  to change its acronym by adding UN to the initials.  

**I was in charge of the localization of the PeopleSoft HR product line for Spain for a couple of years in the early 2000s before I moved to Oracle where, as director of Business Development for the European region for 5 years, I regularly traveled to Spain to further develop the equivalent product line. Then between 2007 and 2009 as vice-president with Fidelity HR Access, I regularly worked out of the office in Madrid, city which I still visit several times a year. Annual vacations in Madrid, the Costa Brava or other places also contribute to tie me to the land, although since I went freelance in 2009 Spain has had to contend with Brazil for my time, both professional and personal. 

***Almodóvar also tends to be loyal to his cast, such as Carmen Maura, Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Rossy de Palmas. Look out for Chus Lampreave, a delightful (now elderly) actress who typically plays the role of  a "portera".

****Margaret Thatcher, whose government was trying to lure the Thyssen collection to Britain, is said to have asked her advisors, "Couldn't we find an English girl for the Baron?"

*****It is worth reading Vicente Blasco Ibánez's, Blood and Sand, the classic torero rags-to-riches tale set in early 20th-century Spain. Several movie versions were made, of which the best are the 1941 Hollywood film with Tyrone Power and the Spanish one in 1989 with Sharon Stone and strikingly handsome Christopher Rydell in the role of the bullfighter Juan Gallardo (Rydell looked so convincing - as was his dubbing in Spanish - that I initially thought he was a Spanish actor until I found out he hailed from the U.S. of A.)

NOTE ON PICTURES: All, except the "Volver" poster, were taken by the blogger

Why Wall Street and the City are beyond salvation

What about "Save the People?
After all, financiers have only
themselves to blame for the
crisis they inflicted on themselves
and the rest of the world

RIO DE JANEIRO
I have been a keen reader of The Economist for a good quarter-century. I have always loved their writing style and irreverent humor, even the rigor it often brings to its analyses. I am less keen when it unashamedly behaves as the mouthpiece of big business and banking giants, as it does in this week's cover story and leader whose title is the self-explanatory "Save the City."

In one of its headers  The Economist  wonders why  “Strangely, California doesn’t talk down Silicon Valley”. Why would it? Silicon Valley companies produce computers and software that consumers and companies (often) love and use. What have the City and Wall Street offered ?(And how come The Economist doesn’t ask itself why “Not Strangely, the United States DOES talk down Wall Street”?) 

The Economist claims that financial markets “funnel savings to their best use”. Oh, really? How can the subprimes be considered as best use? How can the real estate bubble be considered best use? How can the various pyramid schemes be considered best use? How can the taxpayer-bailouts be considered best use? How can the encouragement to governments to spend beyond their means and create the problems we are seeing now be considered best use? How can helping Greece to cook its books (as Goldman Sachs did) be considered best use? How can ruining millions and sending many more into unemployment while the pigs gorge themselves at the trough be considered best use?

Whichever way you look at it, financiers are parasites, living off the body they attack and sucking it dry until they move somewhere else. It is time we get rid of them. If the management of money is so critical to society, like defense, justice and the rule of law, then just as we do with these areas let’s nationalize/highly regulate it so that finance can truly serve the people and not the other way round.

The argument that Britain should hang on to this industry just because it is a big contributor to GDP is flawed: there are some countries where the mafia and drug cartels create as much wealth. Should we then legalize them? “But these are criminal enterprises,” you might say quite shocked. Well, someone prove to me that financial services companies are less criminal.

“China and India have underdeveloped financial markets; Britain has the expertise,” writes The Economist. If I have any advice to give these emerging economies it is to remain underdeveloped with respect to financial markets. They don’t need to import our current mess a few years down the road, with all those hedge funds and derivatives and CDO's which nobody understands. The reason nobody understands them is the point: the less consumers understand the financial products offered to them, the easier it is for the banks to fleece them. 

As for "Britain’s expertise," the Chinese and Indians would be well advised to say, “thanks, but no thanks.”  I remember when, at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, the governor of the Czech Central Bank was asked how his country escaped the turbulence. He explained that  years back when those risky products appeared, Czech bankers came and asked him whether they should invest in them. "Do you understand what these are made of?" When they replied in the negative, the governor then advised them not to invest in products they didn't have a clue what they were about. And he was damn right as his country's bank sailed through the crisis.

Time to get back to basics and produce real products and real services that people really need.

(The blogger is currently in Brazil whose banking system, in spite of its being more regulated than the U.S. or British banking industry,  has many faults, concentration being one of them. I am also worried at the high amount of credit being freely distributed at Shylock-like interest rates to new, undiscerning consumers.  When the day of reckoning comes, and some bubbles burst, Latin America's largest economy  will be in a lot of pain.)

The jobs crisis hits home ― literally

Rio de Janeiro police about to enter a favela?
No, their Parisian counterparts entering  my
apartment building to confront a hostage taker

PARIS
For someone whose main activity deals with workforce management, the surreal situation I found myself in this week couldn't have brought any closer the  main HR issue facing Europe and the United States: high and increasing unemployment figures.

Last Tuesday, close to 12 noon. I was in my home office, expecting a courier bringing me documents from a client when the phone rang.

"Sir," the courier's voice sounded stressed out, " I can't get to your apartment building, it's been cordoned off by the police."

"What? Why?" I asked, wondering if he got the address wrong.

"They say that some people have been taken hostages in the Pôle emploi office."

The Pôle emploi is the French government agency dealing with (un)employment and the local jobs center is indeed housed in my apartment building, a mainly residential complex that occupies a large block north of the Bastille area (see map below.) I had been working from my home office the whole morning and just like a cheated husband is the last one to find out about his situation, I had no idea something was amiss in my building.  I put a jacket on and went downstairs.

At the main gate I saw several cops who asked me the way to the concierge. I explained they needed a special key to get there but I, as a resident had one, so I'd let them through. "But the concierge is not available now, it's her break from noon to 2:00 pm. What is that you want?" They explained that there was one man, clearly a desperate jobless fellow, keeping some people hostages (the things one would do to get a job) and they were wondering if there wasn't another way to get to the Pôle Emploi offices (they had amassed their forces at the main entrance, on Rue Pelée.

The quiet and peace of Rue Pelée, just a stone's throw
away from the Bastille, shattered as an armed unemployed
man takes hostages in the jobs center office located
in my apartment building

"Oh yes, " I replied. "There is an entrance from Rue Amelot, but they don't use it anymore, so you guys can force your way through there." And the good law-abiding citizen I am took them there (# 2 on the map) and then retraced my steps back to the main gate on Rue Pelée (# A on the map). As soon as I came out I felt as if I I had stepped onto a movie set. The street swarmed with cops, elite forces clad like Robocop, it was closed all the way to the Boulevard Richard Lenoir and one of the cops said, "Sir, if  you leave the area you won't be able to come back." I called the courier who was stuck beyond the police lines. Since I needed the documents urgently to prepare for a client meeting, I took the chance. Once I got the delivery from the courier I stood mesmerized by the BFM reporter describing what was happening within my building. There were other reporters and press photographers. (# 3, on the map)

"You know," I said to the BFM TV reporter Rachid Mbarki, "there's another way closer to the building, and the cops haven't closed it, why don't you go there?" I was stunned to hear the reply: he was happy to cover the news from a safe distance. Some other reporters, including one from AFP (Agence France Presse) though, overheard me and asked me to lead them. So I did my second good deed of the day, this time in favor of the free (if not courageous) press, and walked with them down boulevard Richar Lenoir towards Bastille and then right on Allée Verte which runs parallel to Rue Pelée. Right in front of my building there is a passage which allows the two streets to communicate and, although a policeman was stationed there not allowing access to Rue Pelée, at least you had a nice vantage point of the entrance to Pôle emploi to see all the action from up close. (# 4 on the map) At the same time the other BFM TV guy was at least several hundred yards away.

Since I couldn't enter my building from the Rue Pelée entrance, I decided to check whether the one on Rue Amelot, which runs along the Boulevard Beaumarchais was free. So I turned into Rue Amelot, walked up and miracle of miracles, no cops, the entrance (# 2 on the map) was wide open, even more surprising since it leads straight to one of the Pôle emploi side entrances where I found the cops I had led to still there. They looked scary in their Robocop attire ready to barge in should the phone negotiations with the hostage taker fail, or things go nasty. I passed them and entered my building from the inside thus allowing me to go back to my apartment.

I switched the TV on and it felt so surreal to see my street and building making the headlines. The hostage taker was an unemployed fellow who said he was desperate and was ready to use his gun if attacked. It felt like being in a movie, except that the movie was real and taking place right where I live. Well, I didn't have much time to muse further since I had to leave for a meeting at 2 pm. So I left from where I entered, the Rue Amelot entrance, once more passing Robocop & Co., but this time the police had finally realized there was a weak link and had stationed two officers at the entrance who gave me the same warning I was given two hours ago at the Rue Pelée entrance: "If you leave you won't be able to come back." When asked how much longer this circus was going to last, one of them shook his head seriously and said, "We've had situations where it lasted two days." Two days without entering my building! They must be joking. Well, I managed to fool them once, I'm sure I'll manage a second time, I thought.

When I returned after 3:00 pm, the standoff was still on. The whole two-block area was cordoned off , all the way to where the boulevards Richard Lenoir and Voltaire meet (top right angle on the map.) I had only one thing on my mind - how to get back into my apartment? Suddenly a stroke of genius hit me. The underground parking garage. Since the gate is locked and only opens when cars come in or out, maybe there won't be any cops there. I walked to Rue Amelot, and saw that the street had inexplicably not been closed, and apart from the two cops I saw on my out, there was nobody in front of the parking entrance (# 1 on the map.) A few minutes later, a car came out and before the gates closed I slipped in. From inside the bowels of the building I went to the basement area and from there one of the elevators took me to my apartment. I felt particularly proud of myself to have fooled the police security system twice in as many hours.

The drama stage. The double red lines indicate access closed by
police. Strangely enough, they closed all the way up where
Bd Richard Lenoir meets Rue St-Sébastien, but not much closer,
the Rue Amelot, from where I managed to enter and leave
unimpeded more than once 

An hour later, the hostage taker surrendered. It turned out his weapon was a toy, "without even bullets" as my neighbor said. He just wanted to draw the attention of the nation on the plight of the unemployed, he claimed as he was being led away.

What to make of all of this? Three comments:

1. The economic crisis which is leading to such acts of desperation is not letting up as governments are unable to fix the debt crisis (see my post on it last March) and try to resort to misguided so-called labor reform policies (see another post on this topic from July 2010- nothing has changed since then.) Expect to see more of this kind of behavior, but please do it somewhere else, not in my building, or at least not when I'm in residence.

2. The police action showed a lot of incompetence (my fooling their security scheme twice is ample proof of that) and overkill. 150 men armed as if they were about to land on Tripoli for just one crazy fellow? Come on! And, just look at the map above: what sense is there in blocking traffic (and people access to their homes) two blocks away when at the same time Rue Amelot which has a direct entrance to Pôle Emploi is left completely free? Illogical!

3. The press didn't fare any better with that reporter from BFM TV insisting on remaining as far from the action as possible. Watch a video of him "reporting" from a safe distance. Now I understand the meaning of "armchair journalism".

4. For someone who spends part of the year in violence-ridden Rio de Janeiro, which I have known for eight years now, the whole affair was quite ironic:  I never experienced in the Marvelous City anything remotely  comparable to what I saw in the City of Light this week. Sometimes true violence happens where you least expect it.

The case for a different labor-market reform - not PELMAR

BARCELONA,
Read the mainstream economic press (by which I mean The Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal et al.), listen to pundits from the establishment's think tanks and international organizations (OECD, IMF etc.) and you always hear the same litany again and again: to grow your economy and create more jobs you must reform your labor market. And the reform they have in mind is always the kind that curtails employee rights and benefits, never employers' - let's call it for what it is: pro-employer labor-market reform (PELMAR). With the current economic crisis, which has thrown millions of workers out of their jobs in the developed world, it is time to stop and ponder. Is this medecine the adequate one? Does it guarantee any success? Has it been responsible for increased worker participation in the labor market in the past? How does it dovetail with our Western notions of social progress?

So desperate are the current times that here in Spain (20% unemployment rate), a Socialist government has decided to abandon one of its tenets of employee protection (something not even its conservative predecessor dared consider) and reform its labor market in the sense demanded by the conventional wisdom: relaxing rules on firing employees in the hope that it would encourage companies to hire more easily. The logic is impeccable: if I can fire 'em when I want, why not hire 'em when I want? Before you jump to the conclusion that there is no other solution, it's good to look at the past. When I lived in Spain 15 years ago, unemployment was even higher than now (23%) and yet neither the Socialist administration of Felipe Gonzalez nor its conservative successor under José Maria Aznar embarked on PELMAR, even though European Commission, IMF and World Bank reports all encouraged them strongly to go through the same tired old song of making life even more miserable for employees (but brighter for the bosses) in the hope that more jobs would be created. Well, the next decade and a half saw Spain growing tremendously and the unemployment rate go down from 23% to 8%, even better than France. And this without any PELMAR, with employee rights maintained as intact as before. Now, you might say, OK, Spain is a one-off case, the exception that proves the rule, coincidence is not correlation or causality, they were just lucky.

Well, let's cross the Atlantic and check out Brazil, a country I know well since I spend several months a year there. Brazil's labor rules and regulations are even more stringent than Spain's: many employers consider it a nightmare since, once hired, an employee is almost unfirable (or, to be more accurate, it is costly to do so), and if you do and are taken to court in 90% of cases the labor tribunal will rule against you. And yet, Brazil's unemployment rate has been coming down steadily for the past decade. Yes, just like Spain, and without any need for PELMAR. 

You want a third case? Well, let's take our pilgrim stick and travel up north, to the world's most powerful and wealthiest country: the US of A, the cradle of PELMAR before PELMAR even existed, corporate paradise and worker hell. Living in the States in the early '90s I was somewhat shocked to see that in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave people could be fired instantly with or without a cause, that many had no health insurance and had to toil double shifts at two jobs just to make ends meet. Sure, employees could go to court in case of wrongful termination but astronomical legal fees make this option all but an impossibility for most workers. Of course, you could (I dare not say "can" anymore) get a job not too long after having lost the previous one, but even this cannot hide the pain involved with stressfully looking for a job over the weekend because you were let go on Friday and needed something on Monday. Not to mention that any new job also means a period of uncertainty, adaptation and learning the ropes, making new friends among new colleagues. But at least the US unemployment rate was half that of Europe, so, you might have said, it evens out. Well, not any longer - if ever. With both the US and Europe facing the same economic crisis, the US unemployment rate has crept up to the same levels as in my native France, home of the 35-hour workweek, 8-week paid vacation, universal health care. Who is now better off? The US worker or the French one?

Still a skeptic? Let's look at the UK, right across from France, and yet in labor matters so close to the US. (Only when Tony Blair came to power was a minimum wage finally adopted.) The British unemployment rate is more or less at the same level as France. But, I'll be generous, I'll consider this current figure a statistical outlier and use the figure of better times, say 5% against France's 10% (higher than the current one, but I said I wanted to be generous to my detractors.) Since both have similar labor sizes (let's say 30 million) let's make a comparison. If France were to implement US/UK-type PELMAR (free firing, no minimum wage, little paid vacation, limited unemployment benefits, curtailed employer-paid health care plan, well, the works) it would see its unemployment reach the UK/US ideal level of a jobless rate of 5%. In other words, in the old system 3   millions French employees (10% of the working population) were miserable (because unemployed) but 90% that is 27 million were happy (because employed and protected). In the new, PELMAR-inspired scheme, only 1.5 million (5%) would miserable, but the 95%  (that is 28.5 million) would now be worse off because, sure they still had jobs, but could be fired at a whim, had fewer vacation days, limited benefits etc. What logic is that that in order to make 1.5 million people better off (and there is little doubt that a job, no matter how badly paid, is better than no job at all) we make 28.5 million worse off? The logic that says, "who cares about employees, as long as somebody else  is going to be better off": the employing companies - and the shareholders who hide behind. (Have you noticed how you always hear calls for labor-market reforms, but never for management reform? Although the financial crisis and the ensuing recession, along with the destructions of companies such as Enron, WorldCom etc. were all because of incompetent, dishonest and irresponsible management, governments, who are in hock to, when not in cahoots with, business, will resist every effort to reform management - we are seeing it now with attempts to water down the restructuring of banking management.)

Are we to go back to Dickens' England and child labor and 20-hour workdays? Have we decided against the idea of progress? If yes, then we have decreed the end of democracy, because a democracy is a system where governments arbitrate among competing interest groups in society. Once you decide that the majority must suffer so that a few can thrive, we are straight back to an ancien régime system.    

The examples I have shown from varied countries show that what drives the unemployment rate up or down is the state of the economy, not labor regulations, so there is no justification to engage in PELMAR. I can see some of you smirk and point to other culprits. One would be the state of public finances: "we are broke, can't afford it." Well, have you considered shifting budget resources from unproductive areas such as defense to more productive ones such as education? The G8 and G20 and GXX leaders love to meet on a regular basis in exotic locations and issue platitudes in their final communiqués. Why not for once do something useful and agree that all will reduce their military arsenals by half, thus liberating resources that could be put to better use for PEOPLE. We could thus finally cash the "peace dividends" that have eluded us since the end of the Cold War.

Other skeptics will then point to another culprit by saying, "Can't do anything about it anyway, it's globalization. If your costs are too high, jobs will flow to India and China." Well, not so fast. The globe-trotter and international person I am is the last one to rant against a globalized world. I am for a win-win globalized system where everybody wins, but not for one where the same old types increase their profits and the others are all worse off. I am also instinctively against government expanding its reach with too much regulation (I've always believed that a good government is a small government, if not no government.) But, if anything, the current financial crisis has shown that too little government regulation can create a worse situation.  (There is also a case to strengthen and enforce government rules against bullying in the workplace, the plague of modern business, which is inflicting untold daily misery on millions of employees all over the world.)

Let's not forget that the aim of public policy and economic growth is to enhance PEOPLE's lives. If economic growth is going to come at the expense of PEOPLE then it's time to question this economic growth. So, Yes to a global system where we all trade freely, where good and services and people can move freely, but where basic PEOPLE's rights are protected. And  No to a globalized PELMAR system  that throws us back to the Middle Ages. What next? Rediscovering the beauty of slavery, the ultimate labor-market reform?