Month: November 2004

Loot

John Quiggin2 Comments

With the recent emergence of stories about the looting of high explosives and pre-1991 chemical weapons from UN-secured sites, I’d like to remind everyon that this was not simply the result of negligence or inadequate numbers of troops. The Coalition forces explicitly encouraged looting. While the war was still continuing, I noted a report in The Times (4 April 2003), saying that the British were encouraging looters. The report said

The British view is that the sight of local youths dismantling the offices and barracks of a regime they used to fear shows they have confidence that Saddam Hussains henchmen will not be returning to these towns in southern Iraq.

One senior British officer said: We believe this sends a powerful message that the old guard is truly finished.

My London Times link is broken, but the report is reproduced, with attribution in the Daily TImes of Pakistan . As far as I know, there was no denial of this report at the time. Although the US forces aren’t mentioned in this report, it’s clear they were equally supportive of looting, if not more so.

As the various UN officials quoted in the story observe, once you’ve started encouraging looting, it’s going to be difficult to stop, especially in a situation where neither the troops nor their commanders had any idea about what was where. The one crucial site that was secured immediately was, of course, the Oil Ministry.

The polarized workforce

John Quiggin16 Comments

In broad terms, we know what the outcome of industrial relations reform will be. Although we haven’t had radical shifts in formal institutions, we’ve experienced a decisive shift of power to employers, and seen the results. The most obvious is polarization in working hours. There’s been a big increase in the proportion of people working more than 50 hours a week, and also a big increase in the proportion of part-time and casual workers. I think it’s self-evident that this is a bad thing, but I’ll spell out my reasons (probably over several posts).

I’ll start by observing that long hours suit some people, and so do part-time jobs. I suppose I would be the paradigm case of someone for whom long hours are not a problem. I have almost complete flexibility over the hours that I work, and almost complete autonomy over what I do from day to day, and the job is what I love doing, to the extent that there isn’t really a clear divide for me between working and not working (is writing this post at 7am work, or free time – I don’t really know). Part of the problem is that bosses’ jobs are mostly like mine – not quite as autonomous and flexible as mine perhaps, but with plenty of on-the-job rewards. As a result, bosses have always been more likely to work long hours than others. One problem with IR reform is that bosses get to impose their preferences on others, and those preferences are almost always for more effort, regardless of whether this is economically efficient or even in the long-term interest of the enterprise.