How do you value someone's worth?

There is a reported inequity between female and male payrates (or remuneration) with the gap apparently widening on a world wide scale. There is some history behind that because generally males handed the remuneration out and so fixed the rates according to the perception that ‘female was the weaker sex’, ‘the place of the wife is in the home’ and ‘females marry so the males look after them anyway’.

That thinking remains today but so called equality has evolved to being an excuse for poor manners or a lack of respect such as ‘opening a door for a female (or older person)’ or ‘giving up your seat for a female (or older person)’, after all, ‘if females want to be equal ….’. Of course manners, like language, is an evolving thing and some females (and older people) prefer not to have such respect accorded to them.

In an industry like mine, the tree/plant nursery industry, payrates are generally similar for both sexes doing similar work, though mention is often made that female fingers are more nimble than males’ so they can make more cuttings in a day. But I’m not sure if that is fact or a perception. Male pay rates are higher if they can use machinery, and males generally get the driving jobs! Don’t worry females can drive equally well – but it turns out that males get the driving jobs, usually because males are the boss.

Likewise in Africa, traditionally females till the soil until the tractor is purchased – then the females are redundant!

But in industries similar to horticulture, pay rates are kept low because of competition – increasing payrates increases the unit price, for which there is consumer resistance. The only other way of keeping costs down is mechanisation so people lose the opportunity to make a living.

Similar fixed rates are in aged care – you can’t tell me that workers caring for the aged are not worth more than the minimum rate! It is a physically hard job and difficult psychologically. But authorities (whoever they might be – usually government) try to keep the cost of the facility down.

So it does not matter of the worth of the worker or the work, their remuneration is fixed for a perceived reason (commodity/service price) beyond their control.

It is understandable that a surgeon is highly valued and thus remunerated – you would hope that the person rummaging around in your innards is happy and enthusiastic in his work. Likewise your dentist, disliked by most, not because of their nature but the nature of their work – you open your mouth allowing them in with the hope they find nothing untoward and that they will be gentle.

Surgeons and dentists have measurable outcomes and so are able to justify their remuneration but what about lawyers and accountants?

A rich client will pay a lawyer or an account a pile of money to avoid incarceration or to avoid taxes but is that any reason the rest of us should pay excessively for their service? Compliance is the new catchword allowing lawyers and accountants to cream it! Sure they have a longish period of study but they gain most from experience (so clients are actually paying to extend professional experience) and can easily refresh from their trusty laptops. Likewise trades people gain expertise from experience but they have defined outcomes.

Most lawyer stuff is not actually in the courtroom but may be court related – most are legal matters where forms are filled and are mundane but necessary compliance stuff with a lawyer’s signature being highly valued.

Likewise we are supposed to think that accountants have alert business minds and their advice is gold plated – but they have put many a client crook with their investments evaporating! If you use an accountant to manage your tax, the Revenue Department gives you an easier ride. The law is on their side!

There is also the matter of tax avoidance with creative accounting and trusts – all legal but the end result is revenue is lost to authorities. Is that not dodgy?

The cost of compliance through lawyers, accountants and bureaucratic authorities has grown exponentially to become a very profitable business that nobody can avoid!

All smacking of unfair cronyism. Your nursery worked can’t dodge tax in any way and any extra the person earns is clipped. But the manager has the capacity with lawyers and accountants helping them dodge!

Is it cronyism? The richest 1% of the world population own half of the world’s wealth with the richest 10% owning 87.7% of total wealth! How does that work? And why do those 10% even need to own so much? Did they inherit it or earn it?

Do the rich sit back while manual workers are paid on an incentive basis or contract to make them work harder, or more efficiently for their bosses? Accountants and lawyers on the other hand spend a good deal of their time reading, which to the manual worker cannot equate with hard work. Other workers put themselves at risk by doing dangerous or dirty work and they in turn view the office worker as a parasite of some sort.

Evaluating someone’s worth seems to be locked in cronyism, commercialism and perception. The status quo will carry on and inequity will prevail with occasional tweaking on a pro forma basis.

The economy is based on a workforce that is purchased at the lowest possible price and as always the middlemen make the profit. Bureaucrats are in there, clipping the ticket wherever they can. The big boys have much bigger fish to fry!

Is New Always Good?

Sometimes we have to question modernity! The conservationist in me worries that resources are being depleted because we have developed into a replacement society.

This raises many issues, one of them being the consumer ethic where consumers of product create cash flow and therefore jobs.

Some five years ago, we renovated our kitchen and the ‘best new thing’ was one of those taps (faucet in other countries) that have one lever to operate mixing hot and cold water as is necessary.

The plumber told me that the unit had a five year warranty but for the warranty to be valid the filters had to remain in place.

Ok, sweet and all that!

Now that’s all very well but we use tank water and so the water pressure is not great and the filters significantly diminished the pressure in the outlet.

I have no problem with turning old, conventional taps on and off and I’m even adept at controlling the mixture of hot and cold water.

Anyway this flash new lever-action tap began to leak! Here we go, even a three-thumbed drip-fixer like me can put a washer in a conventional tap, but this new-fangled thing has a warranty so ‘don’t touch it – call the plumber’!

During my 72 years on this Earth, I have never been able to claim on a warranty! This time we are out of the warranty by three months! But the plumber is coming because a repair may not me possible and a new mixer may be required (depending on what the plumber assesses) – so if the thing needs replacing, we have two costs – the unit and the plumber (plus transport as we are 25min out of town). I can assure you ordinary, conventional taps last a good deal longer than five and a bit years!

So no doubt we are stuck with the system as it is and will need to replace the thing every five years or so! Well at least we are contributing to the economy!

Building a House

Mbise worked as our night guard. Actually he was employed by DME and was supposed to paid out of the farm profits - of which there were none, so I employed him in my tree nursery, which meant he had more money than he ever had earned before. To put it in context, daily, I was paying him 17% of my hourly rate back in New Zealand.

I was paying a bit more than standard and my nursery workers had it easy in the Tanzania context because they started at 9:00am, stopped at 10:00am for a cup of tea and something to eat (out of my pocket), stopped at midday for a cup of tea and lunch (out of my pocket again) and finished the day at 3:00pm. It was all my choice and I enjoyed my workers.

Obviously they were on a good wicket which was why they performed at least to my expectations – but it was more than that - we had a good working relationship.

Mbise realised that we would not be there forever so he had Mags save a little out of his wages each week. That ethic is not found very often in workers anywhere!

There were two large silky oak trees beside our house that were quite dangerous so I borrowed an old, clapped out chainsaw to drop them. I had to repair the machine first, but I safely dropped both trees.

Mbise politely asked for the timber from the trees, and I agreed because I had no particular use for them, so he dug a pit in readiness for expert sawyers. Pit-sawing was the very early method of sawing in New Zealand, and while there were ancient pits in the forest, Tanzania was the first place I saw it in action.

Over time I ferried Mbise’s timber up to his home place where he had negotiated with his father for a small plot of land – which was his right by tradition.

Later I agreed to help with the construction of Mbise’s house – in design, for the builder, for the burnt bricks and transporting the materials

One day Mbise asked me to take him to town to purchase his roofing iron utilising some of his savings.

I was well used to negotiating prices as but it was his money, he was in charge and he reckoned he could get a better price than I could, so we stopped at one of the many roadside stalls. They had a big pile of roofing iron and the sample they showed was good quality 30 gauge iron, so Mbise had the boys load my truck. But I noticed I could see daylight through the iron - they were loading 32 gauge (or less) even though the [forged] stamp read 30!

I told the guy to unload the sheets and if he had any proper 30 gauge a similar price. I wasn’t angry at him, he was trying to make a living as best he could but I bought a lot of materials in the town and I didn’t want to lose my credibility.

Making a living is not easy for these guys and so they push the boundaries, which is why I didn’t deal with them – nevertheless I was always friendly towards them.

They even used to ‘milk’ a kilo or two from the bags of cement, and sell it off in small lots while selling the rest at a ‘discounted price’. Their margin was small but at least they did make one.

We needed cement for the foundation of Mbise’s house and I purchased it from one of my usual haunts, but it turned out that we did not need mortar for the burnt bricks.

The best binder for burnt bricks was termite mound material. Termites remove all the organic material and moisture from the soil leaving a high proportion of silica. Nobody has sympathy for termites, destructive little buggers, and they release a lot of methane into the atmosphere – so I didn’t feel bad about disturbing them.

The mounds are very hard to break down, and the broken material is difficult to mix with water or soften for the mortar but it certainly works well. Of course the termites attacked us while we dug into their mounds and their soldiers made a noise clacking racket with their nippers!

      

The builder was a man I had used before and we always challenged each other as to the methods to be used. But he was also a traditional beekeeper using traditional methods and he showed me the puffball used to stupefy the bees – bees though weren’t the only things stupefied by those spores – users need to be careful! The puffballs were found in old abandoned pit latrines (bomb boxes).

The honey was not used on their morning toast however, it was used to make a potent brew, which was why Mondays were generally bad for Sampson the builder and his buddy.

Finally Mbise had his house and he was married a short time after. Was it all worthwhile though? To see his wide grin, you bet your boots it was!