Debunking the myths of your employment contract

Employment lawyer Philip Landau looks at some of the more common misconceptions about workers' contractual rights

Staff who familiarise themselves with their contract early on can avoid any nasty surprises further down the line. Photograph: Getty Images

Many workers are not aware of their contractual rights. Their written contract of employment (assuming they have one) is often only read in passing and they are consequently surprised – whether positively or negatively – when they have to rely on it. Here are several things that workers commonly believe, but are not actually true:

All the terms of my employment are set out in writing in my contract

A contract of employment is not necessarily one document; it can incorporate terms from a number of different sources, and can be written or verbal.

Express terms are those that are explicitly agreed between the parties (written or verbal), such as your hours of work, job description, notice, wages and sick pay. These terms could be found in a number of different documents such as a written statement of employment particulars, staff handbook, the job advertisement, payslips or, of course, the written employment contract itself.

Certain terms and conditions can also be implied into a contract of employment by common law or custom and practice. For example, both employer and employee have duty, trust and confidence implied into every relationship. If that fundamental trust is breached, a right of action could follow (in an employee's case, this would be a constructive dismissal claim). Other examples of an implied term can include an employer's decision to pay a bonus every year, or an enhanced redundancy pay, which could give rise to a custom and practice to receive such benefits.

My employer can't force me to relocate against my wishes

Yes, it can if you have a "mobility clause" written into your contract of employment. This would entitle it to move you to another location within the limits set out in the contract (unless your employer is acting unreasonably).

If you refuse to move, your employer may be able to avoid paying you redundancy.

If you do not have a mobility clause in your contract, you can generally refuse to move and still be entitled to receive redundancy payment. However, if the relocation is just a short distance (say a few miles) you could still lose this if you are seen to have unreasonably refused this suitable alternative employment.

My employer cannot vary the terms of my contract without my consent

Your consent may, in fact, have already been given when you entered into your contract of employment as there may be an express right reserved for your employer to make the required changes (a flexibility clause). This could apply, for example, to a change in job role or hours of work.

Such clauses are construed narrowly by the courts and your employer must act reasonably, but an employer will be in a far stronger position if the contract allows them to make this change. You may also have "impliedly" given your consent, especially if the imposed change is of immediate practical effect (such as a pay cut or change in commission structure) and you have continued to work without objection after the change. In these circumstances, there is unlikely to be a breach of contract by your employer.

My employer has to pay my outstanding bonus when I leave

If there is a clause in your contract of employment (which there often is) stating that you must be employed and not under notice "as at the bonus payment date", you may lose your bonus entitlement when you leave. Many are caught out when they resign and not aware of this clause.

Some employers purposefully choose to fast-track you out of the business to avoid you being employed at the bonus payment date – even if you have worked the full preceding year. They can do this by placing you on notice or making a payment under "pay in lieu of notice clause" in your contract. This is especially the case with bankers' bonuses, even where the announcement to make the bonus payments had been made many months beforehand.

I can work my notice when I leave my job

Once you resign or are given notice, you may think you would usually work that notice period. But assuming your employer has reserved the right in your contract, you could also be paid in lieu of your notice or put on garden leave.

Many individuals want to work for as long as possible as they consider prospective employers have more of a preference for candidates that are still employed. But employers will often want to cut ties early once a termination is on the cards – and pay in lieu of notice. You can't object.

If your employer elects to put you on garden leave, you are not required to attend work for the period of your notice, but are still contractually bound to your employer so cannot start a new job either. This is likely to have a greater impact, of course, if you have a longer period of notice.

It is always good to familiarise yourself with your employment contract so you can make the dealings with your employer work to your advantage when you need to. Or even better, try and negotiate more favourable terms before you sign it, as it will invariably be too late otherwise.

Are you familiar with the terms of your contract of employment? Have you ever regretted agreeing to certain terms or been surprised about what it contained?

I supported Brazil's World Cup bid, but the expense is now crippling us

This mega event can only deepen Brazil's problems. The only beneficiary will be Fifa

• 
• • Romário
  • The Guardian, Monday 24 June 2013

People gather for an anti-government protest in Rio. ‘The people on the street are crying out for an end to corruption and against the waste of public money, both of which are so common in our Brazil.’ Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP

Over the last week, the Confederations Cup, which is taking place in Brazil, has been sharing space in the news with frequent and timely protests on the streets, most of them with the intention of forcing the Brazilian government into a new economic direction.

As five times world champion, Brazil's love of football has long been blamed for distracting the population from its social problems. It is ironic, therefore, that it was the country's preparation to host the World Cup that has mobilised Brazilians. Raising flags with no party colour, the people on the street are crying out for an end to corruption and against the waste of public money, both of which are sadly so common in our Brazil.

These protests will strengthen our democratic culture. It is the voice from the streets, for one, that will lead to the strengthening of our judiciary. And it couldn't come at a more timely moment: with the legislation currently weak, corruption is rife – and those who steal from the public are let off the hook. As a congressman for the Brazilian Socialist party (PSB), I am comfortable being so critical of the state of the law in my country, because for a long time I have not shied away from pointing out the abuses that take place around here.

When Brazil won the bid to host the World Cup, other politicians were in charge of the country, and our political reality was different. I supported the bid because it promised to generate employment and income, promote tourism and strengthen the country's image.

Since then, Brazil has been affected by the turbulence in the world economy just like any other country. Government plans were redrafted, public investment was cut – yet the commitments signed with all-powerful Fifa stayed the same. Investment in cities hosting World Cup matches were prioritised over the people's needs. Money was channelled predominantly towards sport projects, at the expense of health, education and safety. The lack of investment in education, for example, contributed to an increase in people with no occupation, leading to more unemployment and lack of security in the big cities.

In many cities, conditions in schools are deplorable. Teachers are poorly paid and demoralised, and Brazil is now ranked second last on Pearson's education quality index, out of 40 countries. Worse: one in four students who start out in basic education leave school before they complete the last grade, according to the UN Development Programme's 2012 development report.

Brazil's public health situation is worrying, too. Those who have to rely on public hospitals often end up with their sickness aggravated by the lack of professional treatment. There have been press reports about people dying while on hospital waiting lists, without receiving even basic treatment. Who is responsible for this criminal irresponsibility?

Problems with education, health and safety were inherited by previous governments, making the country socially vulnerable, in spite of what the economy index may tell you. Brazil is now one of the 10 major world powers, but how does that matter to the people if the social loss is so evident?

Under the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the World Cup proposal was to have an event in which there was transparency on public spending. The opposite has occurred. An initial budget of R$25.5bn ($11.4bn) for stadiums, urban transportation, improvements in ports and airports, has risen to R$28bn, according to the sports ministry's executive secretary, Luiz Fernandes – almost three times the cost of Germany's World Cup in 2006. Why are we organising the most expensive World Cup in history, without any of the benefits to the community we were promised?

Plans to improve traffic around host cities have turned out to be chaotic, too; only three have stuck to their budgets and deadlines. Numbers like these have made the public angry and fuelled popular protests, in a bid to reverse the logic of a system that privileges money over social matters.

Meanwhile, Fifa has announced that it will make a R$4bn profit from Brazil's World Cup, tax-free. Its easy profit contrasts with the total lack of an effective legacy. President Dilma Rousseff repeats what former president Lula said, reassuring us that we'll "host the best World Cup of all time". I don't agree, because we have failed on what matters most: a legacy to make us proud. Only Fifa is profiting, and this is one more good reason to go to the streets and protest.

I never thought the World Cup would solve all of our problems, but now my fear is that this mega event will only deepen the problems we already have.

Understanding Germany and its Mittelstand ethos

Germany is right: there is no right to profit, but the right to work is essential

The strength of Germany lies in its medium-sized manufacturing firms, whose ethos includes being socially useful

• 
• • John Studzinski
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 6 February 2013

'The objective of every German business leader is to earn trust – from employees, customers, suppliers and society as a whole.' illustration by Belle Mellor

 

People talk too much about the economy and not enough about jobs. When economists, academics and bankers are allowed to lead the debate, the essential human element goes missing. This is neither healthy nor practical.

Unemployment should be our prime concern. Spain, with youth joblessness close to 50%, is in the gravest crisis, but there is hardly a government on the planet that is not wondering what it can do to guide school-leavers into work, exploit the skills of older workers, and avoid the apathy and alienation of the jobless, which undermines not just the economy but also the social fabric.

There may be no definitive answer but, over the past half-century, Germany has come closest to finding it. Its postwar economic miracle was impressive, but its more recent ability to ride out recessions and absorb the costs of reunification is, perhaps, even more remarkable. Germany was not immune to the economic crisis of 2008-9, but the jobless rate rose more slowly than elsewhere in Europe. Although in recent months it has edged up towards 6.9%, it remains well below the euro area's 11.7% average. Germany's resilience springs from the strength of its medium-sized, often family-owned manufacturing companies, collectively known as the Mittelstand, which account for 60% of the workforce and 52% of Germany's GDP. So what can we learn from the Germans?
The enduring success of the Mittelstand has been well documented but rarely emulated. The standard excuse is that it is rooted in German history and culture and therefore unexportable. At a time when so much business is conducted on a global scale, via globally accessible media, this excuse is wearing thin.

Let me highlight some of the features unique to the Mittelstand model that I believe everyone should learn from – and imitate if they can. The first is what we might call the Mittelstand ethos – that business is a constructive enterprise that aims to be socially useful. Making a profit is not an end in itself: job creation, client satisfaction and product excellence are just as fundamental. Taking on debt is treated with suspicion. The objective of every business leader is to earn trust – from employees, customers, suppliers and society as a whole. This ethos chimes with the values of prudence and responsibility with which every schoolteacher hopes to imbue their pupils. Consequently, about half of all German high-school students move on to train in a trade. Business and education are natural bedfellows.

The second essential feature of the Mittelstand model is the collaborative spirit that generally exists between employer and employees. This can be dated back to the welfare state that Chancellor Otto von Bismarck established in the late 19th century to head off what he saw as the menace of socialism. Its modern-day equivalent is the system of works councils, which ensures that employees' interests are safeguarded, whether or not they belong to a trade union. German workers expect their employers to keep training them, enhancing their skills. In the post-reunification recession, it seemed only natural to German workers to offer flexibility on wages and hours in return for greater job security. More recently the government protected jobs by subsidising companies that cut hours rather than staff.

A third feature of the Mittelstand model is the determination of German companies to build for the long term. To this end, they tend to keep core functions such as engineering and project management in-house, while outsourcing production whenever this proves more efficient. Mittelstand companies are overwhelmingly privately owned, and thus largely free of pressure to provide shareholder returns. This makes them readier to innovate, and invest a larger proportion of their revenues in R&D. There are Mittelstand companies that file more patents in a year than do some entire European countries. It is one of the underlying reasons for their exporting success, even when their goods seem expensive.
Finally, German companies work closely with their suppliers. This has proved especially valuable in developing Sino-German trade. Unlike most of their international competitors, they are happy to take suppliers' representatives on trade missions. The result is that they can guarantee swift and sure supplies of components and other products. Chinese customers are not the only ones willing to pay extra for this kind of service excellence.

Of course, there are other factors that lie behind the success of the Mittelstand and of the German economy as a whole. Both the economy and political system are highly decentralised, with the result that local banks, businesses, entrepreneurs and politicians know and understand each other, making everyday co-operation easier – while, at the national level, Germany's leaders rarely miss an opportunity to promote their country's industry abroad.

Nonetheless, there is much that non-Germans could learn from. To close the gap between education and business, companies should take a greater interest in their local schools and colleges. If you haven't got spare cash for sponsoring gyms or computer equipment, go and talk to sixth-formers or degree students about what you do. Find out what graduates aspire to. It will help you to work out how to attract the next generation.

If you want to get more out of your employees and suppliers, consult them; invite them into your confidence. Don't complain: "We're not like the Germans. It won't work here." Think of a different way. Try harder.

The same applies to governments. Let me mention one simple legislative option. In German law, the owner of a family business who passes it on to the next generation can avoid paying inheritance tax if, during their tenure, they have increased employment and thereby benefited the economy. What better signal could a government give than by favouring those who create employment?

There is no question in my mind about which is the single most important feature of the Mittelstand model – its underlying ethos, which is based not on dry economic theory, but on everyday, practical humanity. The notion that business should be socially useful may have sprung from Germany's postwar conscience, but it has resonance now, when so many of our citizens are still suffering from the aftermath of the credit crunch and the failures of leadership it exposed.

There is no right to make a profit, and profit has no intrinsic value. But there is a right to work, and it is fundamental to human dignity. Without an opportunity to contribute with our hands or brains, we have no stake in society and our governments lack true legitimacy. There can be no more urgent challenge for our leaders. The title of the next G8 summit should be a four-letter word that everyone understands – jobs.

Family isn't dead – it's getting better

If people abandon the traditional model and forgo children or marriage it does not destroy societies, it can liberate them

• 
• • Jill Filipovic
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 December 2012 13.30 GMT

'It is actually exceedingly difficult in much of the world for women to achieve highly in a career while also having a thriving family and personal life.' Photograph: Aping Vision/STS/Getty Images

 

Are we living in a post-familial age? According to a new report, The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity's Future?, the answer is yes: the traditional family unit is slowly dying out as more people choose to forgo children and even marriage. As a result, society is economically imperilled, lacking the necessary workforce to support older generations. We're also "values-challenged", entering a brave new world of materialistic indulgence, selfishness and protracted adolescence.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Luckily, almost none of it is true.

People around the world are indeed delaying childbearing and marriage, and larger numbers of people never marry or reproduce at all. But that is not synonymous with a moral decline, or selfish decadence. It represents an uptick in women's rights, a commitment to creating the family one wants, and wider choices for everyone.

It's no shock that the drop in the number of children a woman has came along with the advent of the birth control pill. The countries with the highest birth rates aren't just highly religious; they're poor, have abominable human rights records and lack access to reliable birth control. Contrary to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's position, it is not in fact the country with the most babies that wins: if that was the case, Nigeria would be running the show.

Despite the clear correlation between reproductive rights and prosperity, the report's author, joined by conservative commentators, laments the decline in childbearing because, as David Brooks says, it represents a rise of individualism and personal freedom – and that's a bad thing. Brooks writes:

"People are not better off when they are given maximum personal freedom to do what they want. They're better off when they are enshrouded in commitments that transcend personal choice – commitments to family, God, craft and country."

But the moral case against individualism and choice doesn't have legs. It's a moral good when people have a wide array of choices and increased personal freedom – not just for the individual, but also for children, family and society. And the evidence backs that up.

Valuing tradition, family and God doesn't automatically translate into healthy families or economic prosperity. Just look at the United States: the states that most idealise the conservative model do have higher birth rates, earlier marriage, higher levels of religiosity and more consistent church attendance. They make up consistent conservative voting blocks. They also have the highest levels of divorce in the country, the highest poverty rates, the highest teen pregnancy rates, the lowest child health ratings and the lowest education levels. On the other hand, the states that champion "liberal values" do have later marriage rates and lower birth rates. They're also richer and better educated, the children that reside in them are healthier and families split up less often.

And contrary to the assertions in both the report and the commentary surrounding it, a lower birth rate does not actually mean that individuals end up voting to support only the interests of affluent childless singles. Quite the opposite: the social safety net is much stronger in liberal, supposedly individualistic, lower-birthrate blue states. An array of choices seems to mean that people respect and support a variety of paths.

The rest of the world tells a similar story. There are obviously myriad complex factors that play into a nation's success, but the places where people are the healthiest and the most economically stable are the relatively liberal nations that provide for social welfare while allowing many different models of family to flourish.

Meanwhile, the arguments in favour of a return to the traditional family remain unconvincing, and even insulting. For example, NYT columnist Ross Douthat accuses single people of being "decadent" in their selfish singledom (an argument neatly taken down by Ann Friedman). In the report itself, the authors project a nobility on to staying at home and "sacrificing" for one's family, as opposed to young people who show "an almost defiant individualism" and "indulge themselves in hobbies, fashion or restaurants". Singapore pastor Andrew Ong says that the child-free media culture is "about not growing up".

Listening to these guys, you would think that kids are an awful drag, that raising a family requires (almost entirely female) sacrifice, and that such hardship simply must be endured for … something they don't quite specify. By contrast, they seem to think that single people are in a perpetual adolescence, out partying, eating and drinking until, I suppose, we get ours by dying alone with our cats.

That's not making much of a case for marriage and babies, is it?

In reality, most of these selfish singles are in fact eventually getting married and having babies. They're just doing it later. The result is that these selfish late procreators are wealthier, their marriages last longer and their kids are healthier. How awful.

Investing in future generations is crucial, but conservatives seem to value not so much investment as major personal sacrifice in the here-and-now that results in poorer outcomes for everyone involved. And for what? So that future generations can grow up to sacrifice themselves too? Feminists and other liberals aren't against supporting children and making the world a better place. We just realise that the best way to do that isn't by making ourselves collectively miserable, but by actually taking steps to improve society for everyone, now and later.

One of the ways we're doing that is by making it easier for women to choose to have children. Demanding that women sacrifice everything for child-rearing isn't exactly getting the young ladies to line up, but that's what our current employment model is based upon. It is actually exceedingly difficult in much of the world for women to achieve highly in a career while also having a thriving family and personal life. Our current employment model is based on a family economy with a male partner who is able to work full time, and a female partner who stays at home and tends to the children. Women are now in the workforce in unprecedented numbers – but the workforce hasn't adjusted to give people much time for anything other than work. And conservatives have championed this model, praising folks who do multiple jobs just to make ends meet or work 80 hours a week. High-achieving men still often have wives who stay home. What happens, then, is high-achieving women either "opt out" and let their husbands do the bread-winning, don't get married or decide that they want to have kids later or not at all. And the economy suffers for it.

But young single people don't just want to slave away at work all day, and we don't have someone at home taking care of the rest of our lives. We also want a work-life balance. We may not be going home to children, but we want to pursue our hobbies, spend time with the families we've created and engage with our communities. We realise there is much more to life than just work – but we also think there's much more to life than a traditional family.

That kind of push-back could be the key in making work-life balance a reality. Historically, women's work has been undervalued and disrespected. One reason "work-life balance" is discussed but not actually executed is because, I suspect, it's women – and the most disrespected and undervalued group of women, mothers – who that balance is perceived to benefit. So what if this new group of highly effective, highly motivated, hard-working young single people are now demanding more balance and reasonable work hours and leave policies? Everyone benefits.

Women today also want relationships that are mutually supportive and egalitarian, something they might struggle to find – but not for the reasons conservatives seem to think. Lots of men haven't caught up, and still want wives who will be subservient and financially dependent. For men, getting married and having kids comes with increased social status and emotional benefits, not to mention actual salary increases and workplace opportunities. For women it's the opposite: motherhood brings with it lost income and opportunity. There simply aren't enough subservient women who are willing to put themselves in financial, social and sometimes even physical peril to have a "traditional family".

Despite its reliance on rightwing values, there is much to be gleaned from this report. It identifies a place where liberal feminists worried about gender equality and conservatives worried about fertility rates can come together to promote both of our goals. Make reproductive freedom a priority, including the right to have healthy babies. We do this by promoting healthcare that covers the family planning tools that lead to healthy, wanted pregnancies. Federally mandated parental leave and other family-friendly policies like state-sponsored childcare would also make it easier for women and men to work and raise families. More affordable housing programmes would make it more plausible for parents to stay in the places where they choose to live, and where they have put down their social roots and earned their stripes at work. Real investment in public education would relieve much of the financial burden for parents who want their children to have the same opportunities they did.

Finally, support a variety of lifestyles and choices. When the traditional family model isn't something that everyone is expected to personally sacrifice to create, we can construct and implement policies that benefit actual families, in all of their incarnations. When they are not a crass economic contract where financial support is traded for housekeeping and child-rearing but instead a unit based on love, respect and mutual support, marriages last longer. The conservative and religious promise that there is only one best way to live, one that requires temporal sacrifice and is justified solely by obligation but will be rewarded by happiness in the afterlife, but it doesn't actually lead to good outcomes here on Earth.

Family isn't dead. It's just getting better. Expanding its definition and allowing people to choose their own happiness model is just making it more highly valued than ever.

The Tourist Isn’t An Endangered Animal

DHRITIMAN MUKHERJEE

Exclusion of budget tourists can hit support for conservation

 

Tourism can increase its natural capital by converting farms to wildlife viewing land, with shared profits

K. ULLAS KARANTH  in Outlook india

The media splash—exemplified by a hyper-ventilating Guardian report following the Supreme Court’s July 2012 interim order suspending tourism in some tiger reserves—has convinced the public that all wildlife tourism activity in India stands permanently abolished. Following the August 22 ruling on a review petition by the SC, in which it extended its ban on tourism in the ‘core areas’ of tiger reserves, people might think such a shutdown portends a disastrous collapse of public support to tiger conservation. These are exaggerations arising out of a flawed reading.

Wildlife tourism has been temporarily halted only in tiger reserves, that too only in states that have not notified ‘buffer zones’ mandated by law. Tourism is going on unhindered at all other wildlife reserves, including tiger reserves where buffer zones have been notified. The intent of the court’s order appears to be to compel remaining states to create buffers around already notified core areas or ‘critical tiger habitats’, with the suspension of tourism as a threat. The issue, as it has been framed by the court, will hopefully renew focus on the flawed boundaries of some of these critical tiger habitats, for both scientific and practical reasons.

Broadly, there are two kinds of wildlife tourism being practised in the country. The first is ‘budget tourism’, affordable to the non-affluent. My career as a naturalist was nurtured decades ago as one such tourist who paid 16 rupees for a van ride to watch wildlife rebound from the brink in Nagarahole, Karnataka. Budget wildlife tourism emerged in 1970s, when wildlife began to recover after a pioneer generation of foresters implemented Indira Gandhi’s tough new laws.

The high-end version of tiger tourism, kicking up so much dust now, came later when wildlife got habituated to tourists and could be easily watched. It typically features luxury accommodation and fine food (often with swimming pools, saunas, therapeutic massage thrown in). The ‘boutique tourism’ we see at reserves like Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Ranthambhore can be enjoyed only by the well-off.

The rise of boutique tourism is a consequence of India’s economic growth, which generated large disposable incomes that could be tapped. Its concern is profit, not conservation education. This is not a crime, as some appear to believe—but nor is it a great virtue. Although high-end tourism generates some local jobs and benefits, unlike in Africa these are not at all significant when scaled to the size of local economies, let alone state or national ones. Wildlife reserves cannot be India’s ‘engines of economic growth’. Their primary value is for educating the public about our threatened wildlife, generating support and enabling conservation action.

High-end tourism necessarily targets spectacular animals like tigers, lions, rhinos and elephants that attract top dollars. It has spread rapidly across the country, with even the public sector joining in. As a result, in most good wildlife reserves, the prices charged for entry, vehicle rides and accommodation have all skyrocketed beyond the reach of average citizens. However, because the size of these reserves or their carrying capacity has not expanded, richer tourists are steadily squeezing out budget tourists.

This sad consequence of spreading high-end tourism has gone unnoticed in the present debate. Exclusion of the budget tourists is far more likely to undermine long-term public support for wildlife conservation in India than the court’s suspension of tourism in a few high-profile tiger reserves. To ignore this reality and to portray all wildlife tourism as one homogeneous, benevolent entity is highly misleading.

Publicly owned wildlife reserves must be accessible to budget tourists. If they are excluded, it will undermine long-term public support for wildlife conservation here.

The arguments that the tourism industry’s watchful eyes are necessary to protect wildlife and its ‘ban’ will lead to collapse of wildlife protection are also facetious. The high-end tourism boom, in fact, followed years after wildlife populations had rebounded: to claim that it recovered wildlife is to mistake the effect for the cause. What is particularly muddying this logical stream in the present debate is the fact that a handful of genuine conservationists are loudly pleading the industry’s case. However, in my view, they do not represent a reasonable sample of general industry behaviour or practices by any stretch of imagination.

On the other hand, it would also be wrong to portray ‘tiger tourism’ as the most important threat to wild tigers. It is not. Direct killing by criminal gangs, poaching of prey animals, livestock grazing, the collection of forest produce by locals, development of infrastructure such as mines and dams in ecologically sensitive areas, as well as the misapplication of the Forest Rights Act, pose much bigger threats. Ill-conceived and over-funded ‘habitat improvement’ practised by reserve managers is also emerging as a potent threat.

However, it cannot also be denied that increasing tourism pressure, ‘more of vehicles, riding elephants, fuel-wood consumption and water diversion, as well as broader scale habitat fragmentation’ are of increasing concern. This is particularly true because much of the high-end tourism pressure is targeted at a few major reserves that cover less than 1/1000th of our land.

Clearly, the present model of wildlife tourism is unsustainable in a country with over a billion people with an annual economic growth rate of 6-8 per cent. Drastic regulation is urgently needed and more sustainable tourism models must be built. Preferably, these should emerge from shared conservation concerns rather than mere government diktat or court orders. I urge that the promotion of the economic self-interest of farmers living in close proximity to wildlife should also be a key component of any new model of wildlife tourism.

If the economic force manifested as boutique wildlife tourism is to genuinely serve conservation, it must urgently reinvent itself. How can it do so?

Essentially the land-base for wildlife viewing must expand outward from our tiny nature reserves, creating additional wildlife habitat as economic growth and demand increase. Pragmatically, the only possibility for such expansion has to rely on private lands stretching outwards from our wildlife reserves in all directions. Therefore, instead of deploying its political clout to seek more concessions inside existing wildlife reserves, or even pleading for allotment of publicly owned lands outside, the high-end tourism industry would be wiser in partnering commercially with farmers around major reserves that shelter tigers, lions, rhinos or elephants that its clients will pay to watch.

Only by converting farms to land for wildlife viewing, by means of reasonable profit-sharing mechanisms, can this industry hope to increase its true ‘natural capital’—wildlife and wild lands. Unfortunately, the loss of this natural capital is now not even a part of the industry’s business models. Furthermore, such profit-sharing will undoubtedly lessen the hostility that locals feel towards wildlife reserves as playgrounds reserved for the rich. It will also reduce the industry’s crippling dependence on fickle government policies or unpredictable litigation for its very survival.

The success of the ‘wildlife habitat expansion model’ I propose will depend on the underlying economics being robust. It will not depend merely on pious conservation concerns but on pursuit of economic self-interest by both industry and farmers. It may not meet the gold standards of North Korean socialism, but I believe it can offer a pragmatic long-term solution framed within the overall model of development followed by every elected government for the past two decades.

What then of the ordinary budget tourists? It’s imperative that publicly owned wildlife reserves be accessible to them at reasonable costs, even as commercial tourism expands outwards in ever widening circles. What I have proposed is indeed closer to the South African model of wildlife tourism, which industry advocates now demand in India. That model includes well-run, properly zoned national parks like Kruger that benefit large numbers of less-affluent tourists. These are surrounded and buffered by an expanding network of private reserves catering to visitors with deeper pockets. In the process hundreds of square kilometres of marginal farmland, cattle ranches and Biltong (game meat) ranches have turned into additional well-managed wildlife tourism reserves. This case comes as a warning bell for India’s wildlife tourism industry: if it does not confront the economic issue of its own dwindling natural capital, soon it will have no place to go.

---

(Karanth is director for Science-Asia, Wildlife Conservation Society)

Fixing Britain's work ethic is not the answer to this economic mess

It suits the Tory austerity narrative to blame 'idle' Britons for the recession rather than flaws in the modern labour market

• 
• • Gaby Hinsliff
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 August 2012 17.00 BST

A new book by five Tory MPs has accused Britons as being among the worst idlers in the world. Photograph: Erik Dreyer/Getty

Well, that didn't last long, did it? The victory parades have barely begun, and already the midsummer dream is rudely shattered. No more talk of herculean efforts to win gold, no more hammering of iron rings of fire, no more warm fuzzy feelings towards our national broadcaster.

No, it's back to being depicted as a nation of slack-jawed lummoxes incapable of a decent day's work, and to Iain Duncan Smith accusing the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders of "peeing all over British industry", after she failed to greet falling unemployment figures with unquestioning wonderment. So much for the legacy.

In fairness to the five Tory MPs who first pricked the bubble, via leaked excerpts from their forthcoming book arguing that we're not the nation of champions we had giddily begun imagining but "among the worst idlers of the world", this wasn't quite the plan.

Perhaps provocative references in Britannia Unchained to people preferring "a lie in to hard work" will look less inflammatory in context, or at least in season (the book's due out in September, traditional month of noses back to grindstones and party conference tub-thumping). But still, the politics of idleness deserves unpicking.

Here's a test: does the word "idle", when used by politicians, instinctively set alarm bells ringing? If so, you're probably left of centre, because it's an indisputably Tory buzzword – reeking of Norman Tebbit's father getting on his bike and rightwing tabloids haranguing welfare "scroungers", stirring in leftwing breasts the old fear of attack on the vulnerable.

But if it's that word "vulnerable" which gets your hackles up then you're probably right of centre, because vulnerability is a Labour buzzword – reeking for you of excuses to do nothing, of lily-livered bleating about why the welfare state couldn't possibly be reformed which ultimately traps those it purports to protect. You probably cheered when Eric Pickles ditched the term "vulnerable families" (Whitehall speak for impoverished families with multiple social problems) for "problem families", saying it was time to stop making excuses. For the right, the word "vulnerable" smacks of victimhood, of ducking blame and not holding individuals accountable for their actions.

Because that's really the difference between "vulnerable" and "idle". The first suggests that being broke or desperate is at least partly to do with external circumstances, which may need help to overcome; the second suggests it's your own dumb fault. "Vulnerable" resonates for those who believe in the transformative power of the state; "idle" for those who believe in the power of individuals.

And what's giving the politics of idleness a new lease of life is the marriage of an ancient Tory belief – that anyone can haul themselves up by their bootstraps, that failure means you're not trying hard enough – with a newly fashionable argument about the decline of the decadent west and rise of the industrious east.

The young Tory turks are busy weaving a narrative not just of individual moral failing (too many workshy scroungers) but of national degeneration: a sense that we've been spoiled by years of easy money and need a collective kick up the backside. It's intimately connected to austerity politics, with its inference that only rich countries can afford to go this soft.

The idea that developed nations have grown fat and lazy with prosperity, and that only the children of hungry tiger economies still understand the value of hard graft, is quietly embedding itself in political culture. Think Michael Gove raiding Singapore's education system for ideas on toughening up exams; or even the Indian steel magnate Ratan Tata, complaining last year that his company's western workers were overfond of their leisure and blaming "a certain comfort level that comes from a country that has had good times". (Tata is shortly to retire but says at 75 his life's work won't be done, a sentiment of which the Britannia Unchained quintet would doubtless approve.)

It's not clear yet exactly who these pampered slackers supposedly dragging Britain down are, beyond familiar vague complaints of a bloated public sector and kids "more interested in pop music and football" than in becoming lawyers. Perhaps inevitably, they exist now more in the realm of anecdote – the intern who thinks she's above making the coffee, young men scorning the menial jobs subsequently snapped up by immigrants – than hard fact.

And while Britain does, as the book's authors say, have unusually short average working hours, that's mainly because we have an unusually high percentage of part-timers, many of whom want fulltime work but can't find it. (Those working fulltime still do some of the longest hours in Europe.) Perhaps all those frantically juggling part-time mothers of small children – the ones who a generation ago wouldn't have worked at all – are to be deemed lazy? But there's a bigger problem with the politics of idleness than quibbling over definitions.

Hauling ourselves out of recession might indeed be as easy as demanding everyone pull their socks up, if declining GDP really was just a fancy name for indolence.

But the many dull technical reasons why value of output per worker might fall – from the shrinking of highly productive sectors like the City to the rise of self-employed freelances commanding a lower hourly rate than they did as staffers – aren't solved by simply clocking up more hours. Our challenges are not those of tiger economies, suggesting their recipe of working harder for longer for less won't necessarily work miracles here.

Yet for exploring this complicated new reality in her Newsnight report, Flanders was accused by the work and pensions secretary of "carping and moaning", running down an "incredibly robust" private sector. It's apparently fine to call individuals lazy, but not to suggest any flaw in modern labour markets.

And perhaps that's partly because doing the latter suggests we may be vulnerable (that word again) to global economic trends beyond our immediate control – trends not so easily reversed by the classic Tory formula now being touted for unleashing our inner tiger, namely slashing employment regulations and cutting benefits. Idle, or vulnerable? The story we believe about ourselves has wider implications than we think.

Structural Adjustment

I'm being made redundant
In a land which is abundant
Employment is high
Market boom is nigh
It's called Structural Adjustment

Copyright - Girish Menon