Like much of Europe today, the US auto industry was regarded as a basket case just two short years ago.  Detroit was about to join the list of smokestack cities.  Germany’s Daimler wanted out of its Chrysler operation.  The US Government had little choice but to bail the industry out to the tune of billions.

As part of the industry rescue and restructure Italy’s Fiat took control of Chrysler, which reported a loss of $652 million in 2010.  Recently, Chrysler reported a profit of $183 million for 2011 and cut its debt in half.

Government played its part; management made the tough decisions and workers tightened their belts.  Under the new structure workers will receive a $1,500 bonus as their share of the turnaround and, more importantly, there are 26,000 workers who still have a job and a future.

It is a lesson in confidence, determination and optimism with an Italian twist.

Among the half time Superbowl ads that went viral this week is a head turner from Fiat owned Chrysler.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Featuring Clint Eastwood, the ad is not about cars but about an attitude. ‘When America takes a punch we get back up again.’  Continuing the boxing analogy it focuses on ‘comeback’.  You can feel the gritty Dirty Harry, Frankie Dunn determination.

The ad also features a guy who looks like an auto worker; a year ago he was probably in a line waiting for his benefits.  Today he is mouthing the words of Detroit’s mayor – ‘we’re open for business’ – and banking his $1,500 bonus check.

This ad shows how important attitude is.  I like to think the Fiat influence is behind this message from Detroit.  Detroit is a proxy for Europe but ‘Detroit is showing us it can be done.  What’s true about them is true about all of us.’

Fiat's New Dawn for Chrysler

Europe could, should, concentrate on its strengths – it produces the best in the world and can compete with the best in the world.  It needs to shake off some of the lazy fat accumulated in recent decades but, like the boxer, it can get fit again and make a comeback.

The way forward is with trimming down, focusing on exports driving growth.  The story is positive.  Since the Greek crisis emerged we have been fed nothing but doom and gloom and this has been reflected in the markets.

It is obvious Europe will save the Euro and the Euro economies, even if it turns out to be by way of a post crisis Marshall Plan. What it needs now is to project confidence.  Merkozy should simply say, ‘What problem? We will issue enough bonds to fix it, like the US does. This is the second largest economy in the world. We refuse to be mired in negativity. We’re focused on the future.’

As with Detroit, the world will hear Europe’s engines roar again.  Our leaders need to believe it can happen.  We are ready to believe it.  We know it can happen – just look at Europe’s catalog of products and skills.

Fiat has produced a brilliant scenario for its Chrysler business in the US and it does not once mention a Chrysler car.  Perhaps Turin can re-work the ad for a European context and lead a business push to instill some economic sense in our leaders.

Someone has to do it.

By Stephen Lusher

Stephen Lusher

Stephen Lusher served five terms in the Australian Federal Parliament.  He worked around the fringes of politics before setting up Lush on Bondi, a trendy bar on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Frequent trips to Italy led to an inevitable love affair with Tuscany.  He and his wife Cathy sold up in Sydney and purchased Il Mulinaccio in 2008.

Within two months of moving to the Chianti Hills he was diagnosed with throat cancer.  The experience led to him re-focusing his life and priorities.  After a few uncomfortable years he thinks he has it beaten.

His interests include wine, food, history, culture and travel.

He struggles with the Italian language and indulges himself in some occasional writing.

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In an interview he gave to Italian newspaper, Il Corriere Della Sera, Reuters reports that the US Ambassador to Italy, David Thorne, intimated that if Mario Monti is allowed to reform Italy’s labor market, it is highly likely American companies will invest in Italy.

The key word is very much “if”.

Thorne also observed that if Italy’s employment laws change, this would make Italy a much more attractive investment prospect for other countries, not only the United States.

Greater investment would lead to more jobs, more jobs would mean more people earning money and spending it too.  To cut a long story short, if it happens, Italy’s economy would pick up.

The only minor fly in the ointment is that Mario Monti may not be allowed to reform Italy’s employment market owing to the incredible fear of change which Italy harbors.

Italy, though, does not do much to attract foreign direct investment, as my Foreign Direct Investment – Italy Not in Top 15 article from June 2010 clearly showed.  Sadly, the situation does not appear to have changed much, if at all since 2010.

Let’s hope Monti can move forwards.  If Ambassador Thorne’s prediction turns out to be right and there is no reason at all why it should not be, Italy will be heading, finally, in the direction it should be.

Fingers crossed!

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Italy’s technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti stirred up a huge fuss in Italy last week when he stated on television that having a job for life was a bit boring.  Italians hurled insults towards Monti via Facebook and Twitter.  Italy’s political parties were unhappy with Monti’s quip too.

Italy’s politicians are horribly well paid and receive extremely generous pensions after serving their country for a very short period of time – so Monti scared them!

To all intents and purposes, the incident was Mario Monti’s first real gaffe.  Really though, what Mario Monti was doing was pointing out cold hard reality to Italians.  He could, perhaps, have chosen to have put what he said in another way.

For Italy’s population, job security is their Holy Grail in life -  a primary objective for all of Italy’s job seekers, many of whom lust after a cushy job with local or central government and the equally cushy pension which comes after it.  Italy’s employers, on the other hand, seem to do everything in their power to avoid offering employees long term work contracts.

What the Holy Grail seeking Italians have not heard is that less regulated job markets, such as that of the United Kingdom, can lead to people staying in their jobs for longer than Italy’s tightly regulated highly inflexible labor market.  A report for the CEPR showed this.  The CEPR report is from 1997, so it is not, admittedly, up to date, however, Italy’s labor market has, theoretically become slightly more flexible through the introduction of a series of short term employment contracts.  With the pseudo-flexibility came lower salaries and unending internships.

This is a topsy turvey aspect of Italy – in other nations, the UK and the USA, short term contract work is often better paid than long term employment – in Italy, the opposite is true.

Incidentally, complex Italy boasts no less 46 different blends of employment contract.

Jobs for Life are Not Always For Life

The 1997 report called Jobs for Life?  – Is the End in Sight, carried out for the Centre for Economic Policy Research by Bristol University economics professor Simon Burgess and an Italian researcher from the University of Turin – Lia Pacelli, makes for interesting reading.

I would hasten to point out that Simon Burgess in an email to me stated that he is not in a position to say whether the data in his 1997 report is still relevant.  Burgess’ report is, in my opinion, still interesting, as it takes a look at the UK which by 1997 had already undergone the kind of transition Italy is attempting to go through now.

In this academic investigation into the job for life phenomenon, Burgess found that even if job security in the UK by 1997 had been reduced by fewer legislative shields for employees, many workers effectively still had jobs for life.

Here is an except from the 1997 Burgess/Pacelli report:

According to Burgess, the data demonstrate that the average length of job tenure in the United Kingdom is about 12 years for women and 18 years for men. These figures suggest that there is still a large element of stability in the labour market. The averages naturally summarize a very disparate set of experiences: although 24% of men’s jobs had a duration of less than five years, over 40% lasted more than 20 years and 24% more 30 years. For women, the corresponding figures were 41%, 18% and 12%.

This is also relevant:

These numbers show clearly that, at any particular moment, a substantial percentage of workers are in short-term jobs. A common argument is that this fraction has increased substantially in the past 20 years or so, with a corresponding fall in the proportion in longer-term jobs. The data, however, show that this is not the case. Elapsed job tenure was the same for women in the early 1990s as it was in 1975; for men it had fallen by about one year. The proportion of workers who had been in their jobs for less than a year was the same in 1992 as in 1975. And, while the percentage in jobs for more than five years was lower in the 1990s for men (though not for women) than in the 1970s, the difference was not dramatic.

Italians might also like to read this paragraph from the Burgess/Pacelli report:

Furthermore, despite very different labour market regulations and institutions, there is little difference in job tenure between the United Kingdom and Italy; if anything, jobs appear to last slightly longer in the less regulated UK labour market. For a 35 year-old, averagely qualified worker in a medium-sized company, and controlling for other factors, the chance of having a job that has lasted at least five years is 50% for a female manual worker in manufacturing in both countries, and 40% for a female non-manual worker in a service industry in both countries. For men, the corresponding numbers for the same cases are 53% in the United Kingdom and 49% in Italy for manufacturing, and 42% in the United Kingdom and 38% in Italy for the services sector.

What will come as a surprise for Italians, and it is something Mario Monti could have pointed out possibly, is that the report notes that workers in the United Kingdom stayed in their jobs longer than Italians and this is despite Italy having a constitution and heaps of legislation designed to enhance job security.

OECD Job Tenure Data

There is more recent data on the subject of job tenure from the OECD.

From OECD data covering the period 2000 to 2010 for all ages and both sexes, there is not much difference between the United Kingdom and Italy:

Job tenure in the United Kingdom and Italy in 2010:

• UK: People who worked for the same employer stayed for 20.15 years.

• Italy: People who worked for the same employer stayed for 21.66 years.

There is not a huge difference, despite Italy’s protective legislation.  There is, however, a difference when it comes to the overall time people spend in one job:

Total Job tenure in the United Kingdom and Italy in 2010:

• UK: People worked for the same employer for 9.26 years – the trend has been increasing since 2000 (8.2).

• Italy: People worked for the same employer for 12.73 years – a slight increase since 2000 (12.0).

Overall, Italians stay with companies for just under 4 years longer than their British counterparts.

For those working between 3 to 5 years for the same company, there is very little difference between Italy and the United Kingdom.

I did find data for the United States, where jobs for life ended many years before those in Italy and the United Kingdom.  However, instead of averages, as used by the OECD, the US figures refer to the not directly comparable and more opaque, in my opinion, medians.  For those interested, the median time US employees stayed with their employers in January 2010 was 4.4 years.  In January 2008, the median was 4.1 years.

The concept of having a job for life in the United Kingdom more or less ended during Margaret Thatcher’s reign, some 30 years ago and yet the UK economy has become steadily wealthier, even if young people, as in Italy, are not finding it easy to find work in the UK at present.

The 1997 CEPR report and OECD data referred to here might give Italians some hope – and that hope is that the end of jobs for life does not necessarily mean the end of their world.

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Yesterday I spent an interesting afternoon at the Affordable Art fair in Milan where I met English artist Paul Critchley, his lovely wife Helen, and a few other people I’ve bumped into while checking out the art scene elsewhere in Milan.

I even met former Blue Vertigo singer turned artist Andy who, it has to be said gave me one of those ‘who heck are you’ kind of looks!  Andy’s reaction was not wholly unexpected as we’d chatted some two years ago at a Fiat 500 pop art event, and I did not expect him to remember me at all.  Very politely, he asked at one point, ‘Weren’t you the guy who photographed me at the Fiat thing?’, probably to make me feel better.  Nice guy and still doing his eye catching art too.

As well as the inimitable laid-back Andy, I also met a sculptor called Brunivo Buttarelli, who the ever traveling Critchley had met in Moscow and video-maker Daniele della Valle who is heavily involved in an innovative project called artmap.tv – a web based map service which allows art buffs to find out what is going on art-wise all over the world and in the cities and towns in which they live.

artmap.tv is an undeniably handy service and is something which those traveling, either for business or pleasure, could use to find exhibitions and art shows wherever they find themselves.  All the best to Daniele and the rest of his team on the artmap project.  I would thoroughly recommend checking out the artmap.tv website: artmap.tv

In between meeting interested people and viewing an incredible variety of works of art, I enjoyed chatting with Paul Critchley and his wife Helen about the trials and tribulations of life and the art business in Italy, as well as drinking copious quantities of wine and, later on, prosecco.

Artist Paul Critchely Enjoying a Drop of Wine

Paul, who’s been painting for many years, and won the Stowells of Chelsea art prize in 1982, amongst other accolades, creates incredible and very approachable work.  What caught my eye was his mastery of perspective.  Some of Paul’s work appears to be 3 dimensional and occasionally is enhanced with added features which add to the three dimensional feel.  I found myself wondering whether some of his work was indeed sculpture, when in actual fact it was painting.  Very clever and very well done.

Here is an example of Paul Critchley’s ability to create an illusion of three dimensions from two:

Paul Critchely's 3D Telephones

Very clever, is it not?  And they look even better in the flesh.  It’s no wonder that Paul’s telephone images have caught the eyes of many, including, I believe, the odd telephone company.

Aside from the intriguing work of Paul Critchely, there was lots more to see at the Milan edition of the Affordable Art fair.

Here are some photograph’s I took in an attempt to capture the flavor of the event:

Lodola's Neon Art

There were lots of paintings, some of which where highly original, such as these:

Interesting Affordable Art

Paul and Helen told me that the Affordable Art fair had been slow in terms of visitor numbers and sales initially.  Although lots of people turned up on Saturday, not that many sales were being made even if I did spot a few people who had made purchases.

An Affordable Art Fair

Post Art Fair Prosecco

Manuela, one of the Affordable Art far organizers, I think

After the fair had finished for the day, at the behest of Paul and Helen, I went to the evening buffet which had been put on for exhibitors.  It was here that I imbibed lots of good Italian prosecco and chatted with a few more gallery owners and the event’s organizers.  I did not chat to the lovely Manuela who is shown in the picture on the right, but could not resist photographing this extremely cute, in my book, young lady from Sardinia.

I was told by the representative of The Delicate Mayhem Gallery of London, Eleanor, that items in the €1,250 to €1,500 price range were selling, although items at the top of the art fair’s price limit – which is €5,000, were not selling as well as perhaps they might have been in view of crisis worries which are keeping art spending down.

Certain gallery owners anticipated the crisis conditions and filled their stands with art in the €1,250 to €1,500 price range.  It was possible to find items for €100.

Laura, one of the Affordable Art fair organizers was happy with the way the fair was going and said that attendance numbers were up around 30% on last year’s edition.  Final attendance numbers will not be available until the fair ends.

I did not make any purchases, partly because I was not really there to buy art and partly because the choice was bewildering.  There really was something for all tastes, from abstract to figurative, photography to sculpture.

All in all, fascinating.  Oh, and I’m going back today to give Paul Critchley a hand to dismantle his stand and to have a chat about an idea I had which might help him sell a few more examples of his art.

Forthcoming Affordable Art Fairs

Here are dates and venues of Affordable Art Fairs around the world, including another Italian edition in Rome in October, 2012.

See Paul Critchley in Abruzzo

If you want to see Paul Critchley’s work “in the flesh”, then you can, if you head for the Italian region of Abruzzo, which is were he and his wife Helen are doing up a house.  For tips on Abruzzo, try the About Abruzzo website which is run by Noel, the person who introduced me to Paul Critchley.  Thanks Noel!

Mikamai Sponsor the Affordable Art Fair

I was also very pleased to see that an innovative Italian coding company I know of, and have written about: Mikamai was one of the sponsors of the Affordable Art fair in Milan.

——

All photographs by Alex Roe using a Fujifilm X100

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Italy is Ferrari, Ferrari is Italy.  Ferrari make cars little boys dream of, and bigger boys, and a few girls buy.

This legendary Italian car maker has probably inspired many businessmen, and a few women, to strive for success.

Once you have got a gleaming new, probably red, Ferrari sitting in your garage, you know you have made it – it’s why you worked day and night to make your business succeed – it’s your reward for all the blood, sweat and tears.

An admission, I was a Porsche fan and still am to an extent, but compared to Ferraris, the mighty Teutonic muscle car is, well, just a little bit dull and lacking in soul.  I suspect my brother, who had a Porsche Turbo not so long ago would admit as much as well and I know he won’t be happy until he has a Ferrari sitting on his driveway.  Knowing my brother, he’ll probably end up with a Ferrari or two.

The Ferrari 458 Spider

He might be tempted by the Ferrari 458 Italia which sounds and looks very good indeed, as you can hear from this Ferrari video which Ferrari maker, er, Ferrari, has placed there:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then there is Top Gear host, the mischievous Mr Jeremy Clarkson who reviewed and test drove the 458, and, liked this “pretty” astonishing, mesmerizingly brilliant Ferrari a lot, even if all the buttons and tech did get the poor guy down a little.  And boy, is the 458 fast and it sounds glorious too!  What a car!

The Clarkson take on the 458 Italia is here (whoops, sorry, correct video added now):

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is now the gorgeous 458 Italia Spider as well.

OK, so not everybody will be able to afford one of these gorgeous 562 horsepower Italian stallions, but you never know and mulling over ways to obtain one may even inspire one to create the next Facebook or Google or yoyo or something.  Who knows?

Go mull!

Ferrari 458 Spider image by Autoviva

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