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Friday, June 01, 2012

Slave Conditions Reported For Garment Workers in India Rings Bells in The UK Pub Sector

Adrian Close you've highlighted the very real difficulties / problems / barriers there are to making change happen in the pub sector. Essentially it's all about there being a fundamental lack of communication / contact between lessees / publicans of any description other than ad hoc assemblies on Facebook and other social media. Without the internet we truly would be isolated in the wilderness.

Without any representative trade body or any formal resources to put into setting up a network of publicans there is NOTHING in the way of pubcos doing whatever they like to do - no matter what their promises to select committee or anyone else - and they've been bullying and stomping their way across the pub sector screwing down licensees for all the cash they have for so long they have become junkies who cannot stop themselves and they have created an intractable situation where the industry is crumbling from within, the only people able to escape the collapse are a few individuals fortunate enough to have enough capital to buy a freehold or relatively small group operations (who you will notice are all furiously expanding their estates as ruined pub buildings eject onto the market as pubco fallout).

There was a piece on the R4 Today programme this morning

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9725000/9725455.stm

about Indian clothes producers who employ people under 'slave' conditions.

Listen and draw your own comparisons. The way the companies operate and sell garments to Western retailers like Tesco and M&S reminded me of the relationship in the UK between the big players in the pub sector and our government.

Western company auditors inspect garment factories and find no evidence of wrongdoing.

OFT looks at the pub sector and finds the same. 
The facts are all controlled by the pubco's, the 'family brewers' and the BBPA.  The findings sanitise the situation but don't change the facts on the ground.

http://www.antislavery.org/english/
antislavery.org
Anti Slavery
 
 

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