You May Not Believe It...

Meeting Review | September 21, 2011

By Rod Keitz

More from the Old Codger’s Notebook

I know some of you younger Rotarians may not believe it, but sometimes being older than dirt can be an advantage.  I can’t recall any of those times at the moment and, of course, there are disadvantages like having to view the world through the foggy filter of failing eyes and ears.  The disadvantages come to bare when we have a great speaker and it’s necessary to strain every sensor to understand what that person is saying.  The advantages come into play on those rare occasions when our speaker is, let’s be kind, less than inspirational.

Today we heard Dr. Wilfried Prewo, the Chief Executive of the Hannover, Germany Chamber of Industry and Commerce.  Dr. Prewo received a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins, was an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin and can claim a whole list of other accomplishments that more than qualified him to speak to us on the subject of German Economics.

But, I have to tell you, I was disappointed with the program, I mean really disappointed!

No!  No!  Not with Dr. Prewo or his presentation.  I was straining every sensor throughout.

Telling us how his country had managed to lower unemployment to around 6.1% during this last recession, he gave us concise suggestions as to how we might accomplish similar results:

1.  Cut labor costs.  Germany increased their work week from 35 to 40 hours.  Eliminated overtime pay and even the regular rates paid for overtime were not paid out in cash but placed in rainy day funds for the individual workers.

2.  Management agreed to no layoffs, investments in plants and facilities and the funding of comprehensive youth training programs.

These and other steps such as farming out labor intensive production to countries with a cheaper labor force significantly lowered the price of German products and gave them a competitive edge for German products on the world market.

A great program! 

My disappointment?  I was disappointed because all the folks who really needed to hear Dr. Prewo’s words and see his charts were still blindly rooting around in Washington D.C., hoping to somehow stumble upon solutions to a very similar problem.   Instead, they should have been in the room with the rest of us.

That’s the way I heard it.

The O. C.